Co-operatives Need to Confront Climate Chaos
The challenges for 2015 are the same ones we’ve failed as a movement to find solutions to, or even act on, for a very long time: climate change and the neoliberal politics of austerity. The co-operative movement needs to work internationally to stop oil companies extracting, and governments and corporations burning fossil fuels for profit, and it should be a part of the international campaign against rich elites profiting from wrecking the climate.
We need to incorporate other conceptions of what a strike can be and co-operatives…need to be a part of this conversation.
The co-operative movement should use COP21 this December in Paris, an important milestone in the international negotiating process, as something to put their energy towards; they should support the call which I’ve made for a climate strike here. Co-ops should close doors and shopfronts and walkout on the streets as part of a solidarity strike for the climate, the theory of which I’ve detailed in this blogpost. In practice there needs to be support for those aiming to disrupt extraction sites, production sites and transportation systems of corporations and the states that support them. Where possible we should work with workers in other industries who are prepared to go on strike. However, climate change has been defined by automation and the nature of work in the extraction industry has changed, with workers becoming harder to organise as a result. Additionally, the legal terrain for this form of action is yet uncharted and seems unlikely to be voted through by many rank and file, meaning that at least in Europe extraction and production are unlikely to be stopped by strike action in December. We need to incorporate other conceptions of what a strike can be and co-operatives, as social organisations ostensibly providing for their communities, necessarily need to be a part of this conversation.
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