#JustCollapse speech – Berlin

This speech for a #JustCollapse was deliver at a protest against the construction of a motorway in Berlin, Germany. An alliance of neighborhood residents, climate activists and clubgoers gathered and “turned up” the bass for a protest rave.

Original speech in German from CollapseMax @Geradedenken1 [Twitter]: https://team-kollaps.de/post/2023-11-10-gerechter-kollaps-redebeitrag/

Welcome to the here and now. We are in 2023. Or in the year of 424 PPM atmospheric CO2. The global average temperature is now 1.2° higher than the pre-industrial average. The trend is rising.

The probability of exceeding 1.5° for the first time in the next 5 years is currently over 50%. Unfortunately, the trend is also rising here. Data published in recent days even indicate that the time could already be this year.

People who are concerned with the climate catastrophe know the consequences of exceeding the 1.5°: sea level rise due to melting glaciers and polar caps. Stronger extreme weather events due to warmer oceans, droughts and floods due to changed climate patterns. Crossing tipping points that further fuel the climate catastrophe.

The last few months have once again shown us the consequences clearly and visibly: forest fires, floods, droughts and storms.

What was perceived as an alarmist Doomsday preach 20 years ago is now an unavoidable fact from the point of view of a growing number of climate scientists. The climate collapse is here and will no longer be stopped!

Nevertheless, this statement remains the elephant in the room. Neither politics and the media, nor climate activist groups take up the topic. The reasons for this are manifold: capitalist “keep it up” in the guise of Green capitalism,

Displacement dynamics and emotional avoidance strategies – and the fear of resignation and inaction in response to the unavoidability of climate collapse are just a few examples of many here.

The above examples lead to the fact that people who no longer believe in coping with the polycrisis, and thus in a collapse in society as a whole, are not picked up. The development of collapse-conscious processing strategies and future perspectives is thus left to individual people and self-organised groups.

An example here would be the Climate Collapse Café (KKC): a small group of people who deal with climate collapse and other collapse dynamics. The KKC is a community of activists in different areas, psychologists, scientists, artists, social workers, doctors, teachers and workers.

It unites the realisation that we will also exceed the 1.5°C in the long term and that we are already at the beginning of an incredible ecological and humanitarian disaster. It also unites the knowledge that it is not a question of “if”, but a question of “when”.

However, this realisation does not mean that we should resign or throw the shotgun into the grain. Instead, it means that we must be all the more committed to climate protection and social transformation! It’s about gaining time and preventing as much pain and suffering as possible globally.

The acceptance of the unavoidability of climate collapse gives us back our ability to act and allows us to think from the end.

Using the concrete example: Why should we now build a highway that, when it is finished, is no longer needed, because a continuously worsening polycrisis will make driving a luxury good?

Or otherwise: Which consumption could we already voluntarily do without in order to slow down the climate collapse? Especially if we have to do without sooner or later anyway? The question is no longer what we WANT to give up, but WHEN we HAVE to give it up and how we prepare for it.

I would like to briefly address the polycrisis that I have just mentioned. When I talk about collapse dynamics, I’m not just talking about the climate catastrophe. By the way, we are also in the largest species extinction in 65 million years, the so-called biodiversity collapse. The ongoing corona crisis can also be perceived with its late consequences as a collapse dynamic, not only medically, but also socially.

This multiple or polycrisis will increasingly restrict the global ability to act in the future. Material, physical and psychological. To go further on this, but would unfortunately go beyond the scope of this text.

The point is: We have to start organising NOW and think together about how we can make this collapse socially just.

Not only in Germany, but globally.

This is opposed by the fact that the topic of collapse has so far been ideologically almost exclusively occupied by the right. As early as 2012, the fascist Björn Höcke wrote about the strategic potential of collapse-induced crises for the right-wing movement. Currently, right-wing populist players are also using reinterpreted collapse narratives to win votes. Julian Reichelt or Huber Aiwanger are examples here. They are the fighters of the “unjust collapse”.

The described collapse dynamics already have a noticeable political impact on us. Rising survey values of the AfD and the overall picture of the global shift to the right are ONE example of this. Globally deteriorating conditions for women and queer people, people of colour, indigenous people, refugees, those affected by poverty and others affected by systematic discrimination and oppression, another.

Examples of this: the fight against reproductive rights of women by right-wing populist/conservative politicians in the USA and Poland or the oppression of the indigenous population in Canada, Argentina, Chile and Brazil to push through pipeline and mining projects.

The state is also not a neutral actor. Because instead of actively standing up for climate protection and democracy in times of crisis, the state response to the crisis is more police and surveillance, stricter border controls and (un)social austerity policy while at the same time tax cuts for companies and the rich are being implemented.

Concrete example: In Munich, almost 30 activists of the “last generation” were in preventive detention on the occasion of the planned protests against the International Car Show. Other activists of the LG were sentenced to disproportionately high prison sentences for peaceful civil disobedience.

At the same time, various political actors (e.o. Politicians, police union leaders) the peaceful protests as “climate terrorism” and call for self-justice against climate activists. On the one hand, they actively contribute to the violence that opposes the activists from the population and, on the other hand, they are already laying an argumentative foundation in order to be able to take even tougher action against climate activism, which will continue to radicalise in the future.

The expansion of the “fortress Europe” with tightened asylum laws and illegal pushbacks by the border protection militia Frontex must also be considered taking into account the above-mentioned points of view.

Briefly back to the polycrisis: large parts of the population are already affected by the developing crisis. Rising food and energy prices are already bringing those affected by poverty to the edge of the subsistence level. If we think about collapse dynamics, we must assume that prices will continue to rise in the future and will not fall again.

Massively changed framework conditions, such as the loss of agricultural land and crops or disruption of global supply chains due to extreme weather events, will lead to supply problems and a global collapse of entire economic systems in the future.

All these examples show us that the design of the “just collapse” must be an intersectional process. This means that in the future we will have to think, plan and fight our fights together again.

Just collapse is anti-capitalist.

Just collapse is feminist.

Just collapse is anti-colonialist.

Just collapse is anti-fascist.

Even if thoughts of collapse often seem overwhelming and discouraging: remember, you are not alone on the way to collapse acceptance. There are already groups, such as the Klima Kollaps Cafe, that deal with the psychological and emotional effects of the collapse.

We must also start forming solidary and resilient communities that support each other with skill, knowledge and resource sharing. So: Network and form gangs!

I hope I have been able to make it clear so far that collapse acceptance does not have to mean delaying climate protection measures or throwing the shotgun into the grain, but can instead encourage us to rethink our society and how to deal with the escalating crisis.

Even if we lose the fight against the 1.5°: the fight for a #JustCollapse has only just begun!