Breaking Green
Produced by Global Justice Ecology Project, Breaking Green is a podcast that talks with activists and experts to examine the intertwined issues of social, ecological and economic injustice. Breaking Green also explores some of the more outrageous proposals to address climate and environmental crises that are falsely being sold as green.
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Breaking Green
Kollapse Kamp with Dr. Tadzio Mueller
Despite escalating climate disasters across the Global North - from deadly floods in Germany to devastating hurricanes in the United States - we're witnessing alarming rightward shifts instead of rational policy responses.
Countries experiencing climate catastrophes also often elect their most conservative governments shortly afterward, which suggests our traditional assumption that climate impacts drive climate action has fundamentally failed.
Tadzio Mueller, a prominent global climate activist, sees collapse as inevitable but also sees a future worth organizing for.
On this episode of Breaking Green, Mueller describes what he calls the Just Collapse Movement.
Text GIVE to 17162574187 to support Breaking Green's work lifting up the voices of those protecting forests, defending human rights and exposing false solutions.
Welcome to Breaking Green, a podcast by Global Justice Ecology Project. On Breaking Green, we will talk with activists and experts to examine the intertwined issues of social, ecological, and economic injustice. We will also explore some of the more outrageous proposals to address climate and environmental crises that are falsely being sold as green. I am your host, Steve Taylor. Dutch filmmaker Joris Postema recently released his new film, The System. Joris believes that climate change exists and that it is man-made, and if the world is to remain livable, radical change must happen. The film, The System, asks the question if real change will ever come. It does so by following three notable climate activists. On this episode of Breaking Green, we will talk with one of those activists, Tadsio Mueller. Tadsio Mueller is a lifelong climate activist who now believes that a loss of rationality, along with a worldwide right-wing shift, makes climate collapse unavoidable. He argues that we must now make a shift to strategies that accept that inevitability while preserving our humanity. Tadsio Mueller organized collapse camp, which occurred this past August. It brought approximately 1,000 activists with various backgrounds and intergenerational experience to a collective in Northeast Germany to chart a new way forward. Those who convened believe that collapse is inevitable, but that a future worth organizing for is possible. Todzierow Mueller, welcome to Breaking Green.
SPEAKER_01:Hi, it's really I'm really glad to be back.
SPEAKER_00:So the last time we spoke was in November of uh 2023, and we addressed your claim that there's an inevitability of climate collapse and and the rise of fascism uh in with within that horizon and the need to envision a rational response. So could we just sort of visit that general concept because you know it's been a while.
SPEAKER_01:I mean okay. So here's here's the starting pitch. I think we're all recognizing, either with sensing it without really acknowledging it, or just reading it straight up in the press, that the world is either burning or drowning. I'm just gonna go with climate collapse now and then its impact on fascism. There are other collapses, biodiversity, et cetera. But I'm gonna just go with climate collapse. The world is burning or drowning, or kind of trying to recover from one before in between the other, before the other happens. Now, traditionally, we would have assumed that the climate crisis really hitting everyday lives in the global north would lead to a more rational policy response. Like I've been doing climate justice work since 2007, 8. I mean, other folks have been doing it much longer. But basically, even moderate climate types, everybody assumed, okay, we knew that one of the reasons why there was no popular support for climate action in the global north was that we weren't the ones so affected by it. The classic idea, what affects you is stuff you take care of. What's happening to somebody else, you don't give a fuck about. So that was the initial assumption. Like we had had Katrina, but you know, it was still mostly in the South. Let's when I say it was still, I'm taking say, let's say Paris, right? 2015. The world says, yeah, super, super important issue. And we realize nothing is happening in the next few years, 2016, 17. I mean, the the the it's important to also remember that the the Obama and Biden administrations did not produce any less fossil fuels than the Trump administrations. Like sometimes we think, oh, and then the fascists came and made it all like no. They basically whether whether liberal, centrist, leftist, conservative, hard right, hard left, in capitalism, governments tend to strive towards growth. Growth means taxes, it means jobs, it means every good shit, it means surplus that you can use to grease the wheels of social compromise, in particular the compromise between the rich and poor in the global north. Okay. That was the situation. And then we figured once the climate crisis really hits in the north, then we'll start waking up. Now, this is backed up by a lot of historic, like history of social movements. The people who are affected, like that's how, for example, anti-nuclear struggles, right? You could always get the people who were directly affected negatively by nuclear power, either by the extraction of uranium or by the presence of a power plant or the presence of a nuclear waste site. It was always the ones who were affected. In German, the word is betroffenheit. Those who were affected by a problem could be mobilized. Also, all of Solinsky community organizing. The whole rationality of a lot of left and environmentalist practice assumes precisely that. Once people are affected by a problem, they will deal with it. If they're not personally affected by it, they won't deal with it. Okay. But then 2018 and beyond, the climate crisis really arrives in the global north. I mean, in Europe, 2018 was one of those insanely hot summers where thousands of people died. 2021, we had another one of those crazy summers. And in Germany, we had floods that killed 120 people. Now, like for Germany, that's a crazy shit high number. Like, um, you know, for countries with decent infrastructure and so on, it's to have like a public disaster where 120 people die is totally unheard of. We had literally a week of wall-to-wall coverage. I remember there were like a few days when the news, 15 minutes, were only that and then the weather. So the climate catastrophe arrives. But what happens at the same time? This crazy green back, anti-green backlash. So, whereas we traditionally assumed that more climate crisis would mean more climate rationality, what happened was that there was actually an empirical connection that the more climate crisis people experienced, the more they tended to turn rightwards. In fact, countries that have experienced massive floods in the past year, 2024, and had elections shortly afterwards, had the hardest right elections ever. The US had the double whammy Milton and LN. I mean, that should, I mean, not that Kamala Harris was a good climate candidate, but you know, that should have put some pressure on Trump. No, I think it actually strengthened him. Austria, devastating floods, then delivered a parliament with the strongest fascist party since the last time the fascists were in power. No. So rather than becoming more rational when all this climate catastrophe happens, we seem to become more irrational. We want to look away and find scapegoats. And this is at the basis of my own kind of path from being a climate activist to maybe now a just collapse activist. Because I've been doing these types of actions since 2008. I was part of organizing the first German climate camp, we had learned from the Brits. Then I was part of organizing the Copenhagen COP15 protests, the German um, you know, endigelende, those um coal pit occupations with the white hazmat suits that produced this amazing aesthetic that maybe people saw. We had the super power, like we had a super powerful Fridays for Future movement. Um so for like 12 years from 2008 to 2020, I kept asking society, hey, could you remember? Could you remember that? Because basically, although I'm a lefty radical, then we always say, hey, when we do direct action, it gets the goods. But a symbolic blockade of a coal pit isn't direct action that gets the goods. It is mediated political practice. Like, how would 10,000 climate radicals change German fossil capitalism, which is a molecular system that exists fucking everywhere, in our kitchen, in the on the street. Okay. So the mechanism, the transmission mechanism was always we change public opinion, we do cool actions, we do big demos, we change public opinion. So whether it's a demo or an action, the point is actually to change public opinion, to remind society of this issue, to in a way remind it of its promises. Say the promises of the Rio Summit, or the promises of the Kyoto Protocol, or the promises of Paris. First, society likes to listen to us. Because in a way, still, yeah, you're right, kids. Thanks for the reminder. We we it it had dropped off our to-do list. Now that you are 100,000 people on the street, we'll we'll put it um, you know, just essentially our demos were our demonstrations were like, oh, uh, you know, just bumping this up in your inbox. That's like basically, I analyze climate activism as a communicative relationship between society and the climate movement and or climate science, right? So in this communicative fact, we're saying, all right, could you please bump this up in your inbox? Society says, yes, absolutely, you're right. And then we realize that the climate crisis is hitting, that it's not like in 20 years, and we start realizing that doing something about it would actually be kind of complicated. I believe that we understood this during the first corona lockdown. And in Germany, this temporality goes different for like the temporality of the climate discourse is really different in every country. But Germany, until 2019, 2020, told itself that, hey, if we protect the climate, we'd still be really rich. And our lives would still go on as before. Which is also something that the Enviros told society, because they knew that the actual story was too hard. Which is like, guys, if we don't change everything about our motor production and living, everything's gonna be fucked, and you know, we're gonna be the most unjust assholes history has ever seen, and history has seen a whole bunch of unjust assholes. Okay. So the the corona lockdown happens, and I think society understands at a like a gutteral level that this is what the future would look like if we actually protected the climate. No fucking airplanes, very little transport on the street. A lot less work, a lot less consumption, a lot less of almost everything. Now, the degrowth types, and I'm a degrowth type myself, we can tell ourselves that, yeah, less is more, but in capitalism, less isn't more. Consumption is the way capitalism gets us to agree with it. It is also the way that the capital circuit is closed. It is basically having more was giving us more cheap stuff was the way neoliberalism made us gave away our political rights. Like consuming more cheap stuff without that, contemporary capitalism cannot be imagined without the gift of super cheap consumption for the labor aristocracies in the north and in the emerging powerful economies. That's the story, right? And I think that after years and years of self-deception during the corona lockdown, on some level we just understood that. Also, we were in general so overwhelmed with all the changes, the corona and the climate and the migration and then the war in Ukraine, blah, blah, blah, that we just went like, you know what? And back to the communicative relationship. Society was like, hey, climate movement, shut the fuck up. Social movements, progressive social movements, remind societies largely of, hey, keep your bloody promises. And then we try and put our power on certain pressure points to make sure that this actually happens. But that can't happen if all of society responds to us with, no, we don't want to hear about it. We don't want to hear about the thing, about us having destroyed the world. Like if you're parents of a child, you don't want to hear about your child. Like I think parents are in a real difficult situation right now. If you acknowledge reality, you have a very hard conversation with your kids ahead. And I say this really not with any, this isn't, I'm not gloating as a sort of, hey, I don't have kids and it's your problem. I mean this from like a really deep, I I feel so much for parents who have to decide how to have this conversation about the future with kids who are five, ten, twelve right now.
SPEAKER_00:Let's talk about collapse. Uh you you you I I think you've spoken of it as a physical and social process.
SPEAKER_01:So traditionally the word collapse evokes visions of total breakdown, of total immediate breakdown. So more like um cultural symbols than physical realities. If I say collapse, people think St. John's revelation and the beast will and the seals will open if you've seen some one movie or another, where like that's mentioned. Or a hieronymous Bosch painting or the day after tomorrow. Now, what collapse, but that's not the reality of collapse, first of all, collapse is just a systems term. A collapse in a system means a drastic reduction in the functioning and complexity of that system such that it cannot longer, can no longer function and reproduce itself. That can be temporary or can be permanent. So there's the big, there's on the one hand, there's the climate collapse, which is a long process, which can take decades, centuries, millennia, where the global climate leaves a stable state and enters an unstable state, right? Like the last 12,000 years of human civilization, agriculture, cities, internet, the gay scene, Netflix, everything has emerged in that period of climatic stability, and we are leaving that right now. That's one collapse. We're hearing about collapse of ecosystems, we're hearing about collapse of Atlantic circulations. We're hearing about collapse on the Iberian Peninsula, the huge uh blackout, right? That's the collapse of an electricity system. Um, transport systems are like, as far as I understand, the US air transport, air travel system is super close to collapse due to uh underinvestment and labor problems, et cetera, and so forth. So because our as individuals, our lives happen at the intersection of so many systems, when I say collapse from the subjective perspective, I actually mean the progressive disappearance of normality, the progressive disappearance of certainties. Basically, collapse as a process means that the things that make your life normal and predictable will tend to disappear more and more. You at one point, at some point you won't know if there's food in the supermarket, at some point you won't know if they'll if water will come out of the tap. At some point you won't know if the money system still works, if if money still works, or if you can still get money out of the bank, or if the credit cards, or whatever. So collapse from us from the perspective of us living in this world is just more and more stuff becoming weird, becoming totally abnormal, becoming extraordinary. And in this is also already the perspective of the new politics. Right? If I say the future is collapse and catastrophe, people first say, well, okay, then we're just done, right? It's just over. It's like, no, it's not, this is not a Hollywood movie. This is like a years, decades-long struggle in which so much different shit is gonna happen. And and basically, so when I realized that our climate activism sort of had failed, I entered a deep, deep depression. And that I think I've talked about that. And basically, um I'm not gonna deal it. It was I came close to my, I was I came close to breaking because I had literally lost the meaning of life. I did not know what to do and why. Because I just thought, okay, climate collapse, the fascists are gonna win now. And then I began to understand that catastrophe or collapse is actually if it's if it's a process that lasts longer than just a minute, if it takes if it's a day, or basically as soon as collapse has a timeline, a temporality, a a space, a temporal extension. So that's what I'm trying to say. It becomes a space. And if it's a space, then there's agency in that space. There's I can do something in that space. The future will be harsh and brutal. But the question is how harsh and brutal, and that's where the agency lies. If catastrophe is a space that has a temporal and spatial extension, then I can act in that space. I can intervene into that space. Now, what has to happen in that space? If the collapse is the certain disappearance of certain things that we need, food, water, da-da-da, then structures will arise that will try to provide these needs, that will try to fulfill these needs. Every collapse that we know, if we look at the recent economic collapses, uh Argentina in the early zeros, uh, Greece in the early teens, those are two that I'm most aware of, but you could come up with many examples. In all of them, social networks arise to fill the gaps left by collapsing systems. If no water comes out of the taps, then people will interact with each other to try and bring water together. This, by the way, is a sociological constant. There aren't many of those. The fascists always, the right wing always tells us that in catastrophe will rip each other's heads off. Funny enough, that's just not true. I mean, in Rebecca Solnett, I think quite well known in the US, wrote this beautiful book. Um, I actually even have here a Paradise Built in Hell. And it really is an important. She wrote this 15 years ago, and she says, guys, when catastrophes happen, people actually help each other. Now, the job, and this is empirically true, now the job of leftist organizing is then to extend that surplus of solidarity that arises in catastrophe. So here is where I find hope, even. Because like the neoliberals have created a world in which there is no, like, especially in the US, it's so so clear how fascism arises in a society where nobody can take care of each other anymore because everybody is harry scared to work 18 jobs and like doesn't have that whole healthcare thing, you know how that fucks us Europeans in the head, right? I mean, right, it fucks your lives, but it fucks us in exactly. Okay, so the the world that we've lived in for years and decades is one where there's less and less experience of solidarity. And what people like Rebecca Solnit and our new just collapse movement are saying is that, hey, when there is more catastrophe, there is also more solidarity. So our job is to organize that. And what does that look like? Well, I don't know if where you live is going to be threatened by floods, prepare to organize in such a way, organize in such a way that when the flood comes, you can help other people. That you're somebody and I know people say we shouldn't use our activism to replace disappearing state structures. That's a nice thing to say theoretically, but like when nobody is there to help, I want to be there to help. And something that I read in this in the government pamphlet once is unfortunately true. The more we organize ourselves to take care of ourselves, I collectively, not individually, but collectively, the more security and emergency services, emergency services can take care of those who really need help. Like, so if they don't have to lift me out of the apartment, and I'm 49 years old and I can run up and down the stairs, they can lift an old lady in a wheelchair out of the apartment. So, and I know this is just the beginning, but once I realized that catastrophe is an is a political space in which we can do stuff and for which the right has been organizing and preparing for for decades, that's when my depression ended.
SPEAKER_00:So let's talk a little bit about collapse camp. What is collapse camp or what was collapse camp? When did it happen? How many people were there? What expertise was brought there? What happened?
SPEAKER_01:The main thing that we did was to start learning practical skills that give us agency in catastrophic situations. There were workshops on um producing medication ourselves. Like I'm HIV positive and I'm very worried that my medications won't be delivered anymore. Uh insulin is already a huge problem that maybe people can relate better to. It's you know, diabetes more widespread than HIV. But the problem is the thing, you know, breakdown in production chains, you don't have the stuff. And I mean, without insulin, that's that's you you can die pretty quickly. Without my HIV meds, it can take between a year and several years. But you know, we had stuff that I really was sad to miss. Um workshops about radio communication. Like what you and I are communicators. What do we do when the internet is out? Like, you know, one of part of our political practice is talking to people about stuff. What do we do if if communication breaks down? There were global top standards, there was a two-day scenario, sort of, I don't know what they're calling like a two-day scenario organized by people who had occupied organized occupy sandy. And and this is, allow me that parenthesis. When we talk about this type of solid, the German term right now is solidarisches prepping, like prepping together, not right-wing prepping, but inter-literary prepping, but prepping together. Um people often think that I'm talking about small-scale solutions. I'm talking about like a street or maybe a neighborhood. But when Hurricane Sandy hit New York and New Jersey in 2012, the comrades from Occupy Wall Street talked to folks who had organized the common ground clinic after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. And those were Seattle organizing anarchists. And the Occupy Wall Street people created Occupy Sandy, which was a relief, a disaster relief network that, in a report by the American Department for Homeland Security, was said to be more effective and larger scale than both the FEMA and the American Red Cross efforts. This is the scale of what we're talking about, right? This is not necessarily small fry. So we had a two-day scenario run by folks with direct organizing experience in with Occupy Sandy. We had an organization called KADOS that provides a medical relief work on the front line at in the Ukraine and in the get genocide in Gaza. They were teaching a two-day climate emergency responder course that would allow the people who took that course to interact formally with, like basically when a catastrophe happens, you can then go to the local FEMA office and be like, hey, I took this course. I'm actually a trained disaster helper. Let me help you out. So certainly we can connect a climate movement that is hated by society back to society and become as a collapse movement. We say, you know what, okay, you fucked up that climate thing. Not water under the bridge, but now there's another problem. And we're not punishing, we're not, yeah, water under, I'm sorry, I just got the water under the bridge thing. Um okay, we're not punishing you, but we are now here to help you because for us it was always about justice. The the like the mitigation thing wasn't about pissing you off, it was about justice. And now trying to help each other out in catastrophe is about justice. So this that basically we got together to enable people to have agency in catastrophe. We didn't just organize a new protest camp, we charted a new path. Now, all the things that we are doing there, other movements have done before us. This is not like queer self-defense isn't new. Fonsion spacing isn't new. We are standing on the shoulders of all the movements that have come before us, and especially movements in the South. Like there's another criticism that we are a very northern discourse. Because, of course, collapse, I mean, in the Americas, collapse has been enforced on the First Nations for over 500 years. So collapse like as a transitive verb, I collapse you, so to speak. Um, but so these are exactly the movements we're learning. Like basically, folks that have lived in catastrophe and collapse. I mean, what do you do in a major city when a heat wave comes and there's no electricity? I am sure that the movements in Jakarta and Bombay and Mumbai have have have an answer for this, or have have multiple answers for this, have have practices for this. And this is, I think what we did at the collapse camp, what was new was that we basically we took this whole idea of preparing for disaster and catastrophe. We took it out of the right's hand and said, hey, this is quite cool, and it's important, and it's kind of funky and fun, and it gives hope. And that's we gave, I think we we gave that we charted the a path, a path for progressive movements forward.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know if you you you wrote this yourself, but on Fleedlick Sabotage, your website, uh there on on the article concerning Collapse Camp, you wrote, or someone wrote, what remains is not just a precious memory, but a humming hope that we've built something, a new beginning, a soft structure, a way to face the unraveling reality, not alone together. So it sounds like a success.
SPEAKER_01:So this I was I was critical because that that was that was one of the sentences we wordsmithed together. We that was actually a collective text, and this is one of the sentences that meant a lot to us, and and I'm glad that you picked it up. Um yes, it was a success. I mean, this there were we we made some mistakes, which uh in the sense of like as a productive self-criticism, I'd like to talk about one or two of those. But fundamentally, I would say it was a huge success. For the people who were a part of it, it really I mean the the the raw movement joy in the faces of like of of the people organizing the camp when everybody arrived and everything worked out, is amazing to behold, and that kind of stuff drives me for years. And to know that so many people are like, okay, what can we do? Can we do next to the point where we are overwhelmed, like by all the what can we do next? We're like, uh we don't know. Can you maybe figure that out a little bit yourselves? So, yes, we think it was a success. We opened a new path. The and and if if you allow me that, I'm incredibly proud of the work I did and my close friend, like us in the leadership team. That we said we're gonna do this, we had a certain vision, and we said we're gonna implement that vision. For example, it would have been possible for the camp to tilt too far into a sort of militaristic, let's prepare, like basically a kind of just like let's build fighting brigades type camp. Now, I have nothing per se against that, but we can imagine the atmosphere of such a camp becoming too militaristic, becoming too aggressive, and leaving out the whole relationship building, the whole emotional labor thing. There was also a possibility for the camp to tilt too much into the what we from the kind of militant wing in the organizing process called uh dying happy together, uh, which we were so that was our uh our kind of bitchy. Well, that so like you know, there were these the skill and the charactus of this these these two sides of tilting, and we pushed it through in a way that, and we, for example, we didn't organize the camp as it is traditional in a big plenary that then create where a big plenary creates, empowers working groups, and they report back. We had um we had like a leadership council of seven people and and all the representative of the working groups being represented. So we had in that sense, we went, we took steps away from the horizontalism which uh dominated the movement where I create where I came up. Like I come from the globalization movement, and it was all right, remember uh early zeros, um Barbara, like uh there was a piece in New Left Review talking about anarchist sensibilities being dominant in the movement. And we were all kind of anarchists at the time. So we were a lot less horizontalist than other movement projects. And I think, and so this is one of the debates I want to open about about leadership. So I say that I'm really, really proud because I mean I was I told my personal story a bit, and I basically dragged myself from the bottom of a depression where I was telling my random lovers, just let's take drugs every day until the end, because that'll still be more fun than fleeing from the fascists in 10 years. Um, like from the absolute depth, I sort of pulled myself up. I I did the emotional labor. I developed a kind of like through learning from people, I pulled together a strategy and a story and a narrative. And then we pulled off this collapse camp. So I'm not saying collapse camp is I'm not saying I organize collapse camp, I co-organize it. But the story in which that made sense, I spent two years telling. And that was a story that like I told, I did something like I told my own story in a very in a way that makes me very, very vulnerable. I talk about drugs and depression, and I connected with people and I gave people hope. And that for a storyteller is I I feel incredibly proud of what I've done. Now there are also people who are telling me that the two things. One, we are being criticized for the way we are communicating with the climate movement, and this is a criticism that falls particularly at my feet. My fellow sort of speaker, there were two spokespeople for the camp. Cindy Peter was the other. And um my argument has been that we have to organize this just collapsed movement because the old climate movement cannot deliver moments of empowerment anymore. However, these organizations still exist and they still organize. Now, my the question I'm being asked, and I'm I uh at lunch, uh just half an hour before uh an hour before our conversation, by a friend who doesn't want to meet me for lunch tomorrow because she said, You're too stressed right now, and I want to criticize you. So, from people very close to me, question they're asking, Tadri, are you actively demobilizing people by saying that the transmission mechanism that the climate movement uses or relied on is broken? And I'm actually really torn. And I wanted to share this with you because it's it's you know, you're you're an experienced comrade, and in a way, this is not my German residence chamber, but an international one. So I'm really struggling with this right now. I am convinced that my analysis is correct. The climate movement cannot function anymore and must deliver moments of disempowerment and will thus be counterproductive. But is that an okay way to communicate between movements? I I and I'm really I'm I I don't I don't know at this point because I'm convinced of the truth of my analysis that there are political actors right now out there who are frustrated by me telling a story that undermines them. And this is a really an So the way I've set this up for you right now, how do you it's a really an honest. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
SPEAKER_00:You're really putting me on the spot, Dodzio. I am you are putting me on the spot. I mean I it seems quite likely that our modern systems at some point there's going to be massive failures. And you said it's going to be over a period of time. I I have a hard time envisioning the current human the way we've organized ourselves in the North and in large economic powers is sustainable. And and I also accept that when this process, if it does occur, and it and it seems somewhat inevitable, that that it is going to be over a period of time. And I think it's fascinating your observation and or assertion that during collapse there is a surplus of um I can't remember how you um solidarity.
SPEAKER_01:Of solidarity.
SPEAKER_00:And that maybe collapse is too important to to surrender to fascism, the fascist vision. Exactly. But I can I I you know are there's several several things. I I come from a tradition in the United States I uh where I I I I um was raised in um a Christian tradition that was very focused on apocalypse. And I think you referred to the uh prophecy. St. John's Yeah, St. John's prophecy. I I I feel like this discussion of of what do we do with the children, do we tell them it is over? And would would that be self-fulfilling prophecy? So I have a concern. I'm not sure. You know, so so going into this interview, I was like, I really don't want to personally perpetuate what happened to me because it's for for as a as a young person I had a hard time seeing the future, you know, and it was because of that story that was there.
SPEAKER_01:Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, very demotivating. Like I mean, it was very in in what I was exposed to was very real. It wasn't speculative, it wasn't theological. It's it's going to happen October 13th of next year, type of thing.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, that right. That's what I'm talking about. That wing of Christianity. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So the rapture and the rapture and all that. So I see a tension here. I I I mean, there's a tension here. So is there is there a way to communicate it as this is a likely scenario, a possible worlds, you know? But I mean so I don't know. Do do so I I can I can see how it is a bit inimical to you know people trying to prevent climate disaster and and still are working under that. I don't know how you square that circle.
SPEAKER_01:First of all, thank you for that great response. Because the first thing it shows me is that what we said in our closing text, we didn't give enough space to this debate. I've I now recognize that there was a certain jealousy in guarding our intellectual space because we had fought so hard to create this space where we didn't constantly have to talk to people about our what we consider pretty certain uh assumptions, like pretty certain assumptions. And but your response really and during the process of the camp, as you know, sometimes one gets into a bit of a group think and just kind of like that in retrospect, that was not the right decision. We should have given more space to debating the fundamental assumptions to give those who are less comfortable with saying this will certainly happen more space and to recognize their uncertainties as a legitimate part of that collapse space. Because there is, of course, one tiny problem, which is that if you say collapse is the most likely scenario, let's just say hypothetical numbers. Let's say collapse is the likeliest scenario at 90% and non-collapse is at 10%. A mind that wants to ignore collapse will latch on the 10% and ignore the 90%. It's a little bit like I'm going back to boyfriend examples. If I tell you, okay, like the last 15 dates, you were like, okay, there was one date where you were a nice guy, but the rest of the 14 dates, you were shit to me. You know what the boyfriend would say, yeah, but honey, look, uh you said I was the nice guy, so why are we having this debate? Like, did you not hear the sentence? And the brain will literally say, no, it didn't. It heard it, but it deleted it. Like, knowledge that you want to ignore, it appears to your brain when it searches that knowledge that it says file not found. So there is also a concrete reason why we didn't open that space for debate. Because for us, it's also been a very stressful space, because in that we've had to face. I mean, you know, some some left we leftists can also be pretty good at magical thinking. I mean, I had a podcast debate with Jan Goss, a very smart young leftist here, and that runs a great podcast, Future Histories, and we got into a real fight. Because he was challenging my assumptions, which was legitimate, and I respect and I re- overreacted. But at some point he essentially said, Well, if your theory doesn't deliver my communist hope, then it must be wrong. And he didn't, I'm and if he listens to this now, he'll be fucking furious and probably justified me. So but okay, no, that's what I've heard. That's not what he said, but I heard at some point, hey, Taja, your theory may be right, but it makes me hopeless. So I'm just gonna attack it. Not because it's it's wrong, but because it makes me hopeless. So there is a dynamic in these debates that sometimes makes them incredibly unproductive, because maybe it's not the fact that it's actually still hypothesis, it's not the actual uncertainty that makes people uncertain in deciding whether collapse will come or not, but it's their desire to make, to believe that it's not certain. So so basically, if you don't want to accept that collapse is likely, there will not be a single analytical argument I can make that convinces you of that. Because I have learned one thing, and my feminist comrades are laughing at me now, and I think that it took me 48 years to understand that. Traditionally, we think that rational cognition comes before and is superior to emotional awareness or whatever. But I've come to be certain that what we cannot accept emotionally as true, we cannot understand analytically. So this is where it becomes difficult. But anyway, I totally yes, I uh I appreciate that you confirmed our our sense here that it was it was not a good idea in terms of building a new movement that is open to people to exclude the possibility of uncertainty so radically from the program. I mean, that wasn't that was not what we did, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe it it it also makes sense, just from a sense of mutual aid societies, to respond to increasing catastrophes, that that that even for those who don't believe collapse is absolutely necessary or are inevitable, that it does make sense to work in communities to respond to increasing um crises. If you call it crises and not collapse, maybe there's a broader tent.
SPEAKER_01:And this is the problem. And this is really the problem, and this is not a rhetorical, this really is the problem. If I say, okay, while I'm certain and it's totally legitimate that you're not certain, we can totally work together on mutual aid. In terms of the allocation of scarce movement resources, and one of the things that defines movement social movements in the literature is their relative resource poverty. If you look at how even the social movement is defined, you're defined as a resource-poor actor compared to other bigger institutions like lobbies, etc. That means that we have limited time and money and et cetera, and resources to allocate to a limited number of projects. And I do believe that there are one or two things to learn from capitalism. And when I understood the principle of opportunity cost calculation, I was blown away, which is, for people who haven't heard it, is basically the cost of something isn't the amount of money you invest in it, but the difference between the outcome of the project you're investing in and the next best project you didn't invest in, or the cost or the value of something. So that means that if we invest our limited and scarce resources into things where I know where I'm certain, where I'm convinced, or I have convinced myself, that they cannot have a positive effect, then those would be wasting resources from a pool of scarce resources in a situation of significant time pressure. If I look at the changes in US society from 9-1124 to 9-11-25, that's a year. And holy mother of God, I don't need to German explain the US to you. Um so uh I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00:I could use a little bit of that, you know.
SPEAKER_01:No, but look, it's just it's just you know, we're just in shock. Like we see the we see the videos of ice, you know, of ice thugs um behaving like the SA in the streets, and we we're just battled like we there's no it's just we are shocked, we are saddened, all our hearts go out to you, and we wonder how the fuck do they respond now? They basically there's a lot of shock seeing, especially folks like me who've lived in the US, of seeing masked state terrorist thugs in community. Like I I can I'm sorry, there is no analysis if there's just pure shock. But what I'm saying is things can happen so fast. So back to the point. Do we I on some level, yes, big tent. Everybody do like in a way, the old globalization movement approach, right? The movement of movement approach. Oh my god, I just understood something. One of the reasons why I'm critical of the big tent approach is that's where I come from, the alter-globalization movement was a big tent, everybody, the enviros, the the the the healthcare people, the the the the the the docker, the dock workers, everybody was there, right? The turtles and the themes and the turtles. Um and in the end, the various practices of these movements didn't end up being particularly synergetic. The synergy came at those at those at those um summit protests because we had a common enemy. But here, if a whole bunch of people go and protest in the street saying, hey, protect the climate more, I do think that wastes resources and leads people down an emotionally dangerous path towards depression because that would involve claims that I am certain will not be true, and now I'd recognize something else. I really am it's too much my own story because when I hear the stories that these folks tell me, I hear myself from 10 years ago. Like in the movie, the system that you mentioned, um there is a scene where I'm shown at a at an action nine years ago. We're occupying a coal pit in this phase class. 2016, we are at the height of our power as Endegelende, and I'm at the height of my arrogant cockiness. So I'm like, I'm the I'm like, I'm shouting into the cameras, this is the capitulation, like because there was no cops and we were occupying all the tickets. This is the capitulation of the fossil fuel industry. And if they retreat, we'll follow them from the pits to the streets. If they retreat to the boardrooms, we will. I look at that guy and I hate him. I hate him because he told himself lies. Now, I know that they weren't necessarily lies then, but in retrospect, we like the strategies that the anti that the anti-coal and climate movement used, they couldn't have worked. And they led me into a depression. And right now I'm worried that we are leading other people into a depression. Now, I have found a path on which I know there to be hope. So I tend to be a little bit like, no, no, no, don't go that path. There is no hope there. And then people feel attacked by me. Basically, the some of some of my old climate comrades feel just as attacked by the new collapse movement as maybe the emissions trading types felt when uh the climate justice folks, you know, who brought us together, uh, uh Anne and Oren and these people, like in the early zeros, um, the climate justice movement emerged actually as a criticism of emissions trading and all that climate injustice. And and in the late zeros, the emissions trading folks were saying the exact same things to us radical climate justice types that the climate types are now telling, telling me. They're saying, hey, you're breaking the momentum of our mobilization. You're you're diffusing our unity, you're you're weakening us. There is no unity, there is no mobilization, and we are already totally weakened. We are at a point of total defeat. The institutions and strategies that we put our that we the the the institutions and processes and policies that we focused our strategic energies on have no chance of delivering what we need them to deliver. That doesn't mean that you can't prevent, you can, for example, that you can of course win victories against highways, against this plant, that pit. That's absolutely possible. And communities should defend themselves. We just shouldn't believe that that will change in any way the development of global emissions. And that takes us back, and and therefore the climate collapse, and that takes us back to resource investment. I believe that it is wrong to invest in strategies that have failed. But and this is Volanda Because I've invested so much of myself in this strategy, I'm probably not clear-headed enough right now to make that judgment call. I really I really mean that. I'm not, I'm not pulling out of the debate, but I'm realizing that I cannot uh distinguish right now clearly between my own experience and what is politically right. Does that make makes that make sense here?
SPEAKER_00:I think I think it it it it it suggests that you you you value objectivity and you understand that you're very close to it right now. But what's interesting to me, and I think one of the things that's that that that that's been very unique and valuable and and and and and who knows, I mean, uh where where Claps Camp leads is the space you've created for people who have come to believe like I said, I have a hard time believing that the system's going to continue. It's just you've created a space uh for people who look at this and say, I I don't see systemic change on the horizon. I don't see I don't see that. I don't see a happy ending. I mean, w where do you go with that? You know, as you said earlier, you know, well, some people choose to stay home. You know? Um so I I would have to confess that, you know, sometimes looking at the arc of of of the history of these climate movements and and environmental d degradation during my lifetime, it's it's not it's not a a trajectory where I say, hey, we're on the right side of history. So and and and and if you broaden out, I mean it's hard to understand our to know whether there's really going to be anything we can call history in the future. With AI, with with the way political discourse is going, how how how we're ripping apart academic institutions in the United States, uh, you know, and how that could be a blueprint for the future. I mean, is there even going to be history? I mean, we've had this notion of being on the right side of history, the arc of history, this, that, and the other. It doesn't it's not looking it's not looking good.
SPEAKER_01:In the MLK said, or Dr. King, as I think uh he's he's uh in the US more frequently referred to what is it, the moral arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. And in if the collapse hypothesis is correct, then the moral arc of history is short and bends towards fascism. And um in a way that's the I think that's what since I've engaged with climate change in 2007, and I read Jared Diamond's book Collapse, which he published in the mid-Zeros, and which read about societal collapse. I that societies can collapse, that they can really break down, and then maybe then there's a historical record of them, but that they actually end. You know, some people will survive somehow, but the societies break down and end. And I am at this point certain that that will happen. And you're right, in that sense, the space that we've created is for those who have a near who who think it is likely or nearly certain that this will happen and who want to find ways to not break under that truth or under the weight of that. Let's call it for now, from my perspective, realization, or a hypothesis would be a little too bloodless at this point. But that realization again nearly broke me. And then I found that path towards hope. And then together with others, we said, hey, check this out. And a thousand people came. Like, we didn't even do any advertising for this. Like it was just a bunch of social media accounts, my blog, and a few people telling stories at events and me reading my book. And like basically there was no and and and the spaces were like oversubscribed. We could have probably organized a camp for 1,500 people if we'd had the capacity or 2,000. The interest is there because people want to have a story that doesn't tell them, that doesn't focus on low probability positive outcomes, like an energy transition, climate justice, uh, a quick defeat of the fascist wave, but that actually takes the dark scenarios as likely, says, okay, if catastrophe is the new normality, then let's understand that space of catastrophe. One of my research projects, should I ever have time again to read books and stuff and think, is um to understand catastrophes as spaces. There's a book called Disasterology, which I think is one of the coolest titles ever. And I want to understand how catastrophes like traditionally we've seen like there's normality, then there's a catastrophe that creates a space of emergency, a state of exception where normal rules don't apply. And then we go back to normality. But if now catastrophe becomes normality, then that's the new space, then that's no longer the state of exception, but that's the new normality. How to find how to and I'll I'll quote: I have a I have a political yoda by the name of Per Pluske in Sweden. And the question he asked me, and he taught me all this this this from this strategy comes from him. And the question he said, ask yourself who you want to be when catastrophe strikes. Do you want to be the guy who runs away, saves only himself, takes his big car, and lets everybody else burn in the house? Or do you want to be the guy who you know creates rope ladders, who makes sure that the baby on the third floor is actually out, who, when shit is done, tries, you know, and and and works with the people from the house and builds a community and says, hey, how do we take care of each other's needs? Which of those people do you want to be? And and for me, for me, it's like that that is where where where the hope lies. Who do you want to be? What do you need to be that person and then go and build it? Whether the city you live in is going to be affected by floods or heat waves, or if you're a diabetic or at the positive or whatever it is, or you're you you're or you know, you have children whose whose future you want to assure, or that whose for whom you want to assure a future where there are people, good people, where there is community and solidarity. Like build the relations now. It's not about supplies in your closet, it's about building relations with people. And that, which takes us back to the strategic question of the big tent. Now, abstracting from the collapse term for a moment. I think that's what we all see right now. That the communities are communities that have links and structures can resist all sorts of catastrophe. Or, if not resist, you know, survive and come out, still a community, still human, still together.
SPEAKER_00:Tadseo Mueller, thank you for joining us on Breaking Green. It's been a pleasure to be back. You have been listening to Breaking Green, a Global Justice Ecology Project podcast. To learn more about Global Justice Ecology Project, visit Global JusticeEcology.org. Breaking Green is made possible by tax-deductible donations by people like you. Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forests, defend human rights, and expose both solutions. Simply text GIV. GIVE2 1716 257 4187. That's 1716 257 4187.