[Ecological imperialism is a "blind spot" for environmentalists
who cannot see the connection between war and ecocide. We would expect
environmentalists to fight for disarmament and support the conversion
of military technology into civilian production. ]
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THE ECOLOGICAL POWER GAP IN SWEDEN  
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Jonathan Michael Feldman
March 30, 2023
xxxxxx
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_ Ecological imperialism is a "blind spot" for environmentalists who
cannot see the connection between war and ecocide. We would expect
environmentalists to fight for disarmament and support the conversion
of military technology into civilian production. _

Advertisement for a military submarine as a part of "nature" where
defense firms are portrayed as ecological actors: A symbol of Sweden's
new brand of ecological militarism. ,

 

On March 29, 2023 Swedish Television (SVT) reported
[[link removed]]the findings
of the Climate Policy Council that the new right-wing Swedish
government's policy was was insufficient for achieving the country's
climate goals. Emissions had to be reduced more quickly if the
parliament's climate goals were to be reached. The council was also
critical of the government's climate policy and said that it was it
was "the first time in two decades that a change in policy has led to
increased emissions." Cecilia Hermansson, chair of the Climate Policy
Council, stated that "it would be remarkable and serious if changes to
Sweden's national policy would lead to an increase in greenhouse gas
emissions in our country." For several years this Council warned that
emissions needed to be reduced more and even believe that Sweden lost
control over the process even as the European Union tightened its
goals. The Council's recent report stated that "instead of quickly
reducing emissions, the changes decided and announced so far will, on
the contrary, also according to the government's own assessment,
increase emissions in the near term." A poll
[[link removed]]publicized
in _Dagens Nyheter_ found that the share believing that the ruling
government was doing a bad job increased from 43% in November 2022 to
55% in March 2023. The poll found that 37% supported the Social
Democrats and 37% supported the two largest right-wing parties (the
Moderate Party and the Swedish Democrats).

THE DISPLACEMENT OF ENVIRONMENTALISM IS A FAILURE TO "CONNECT THE
DOTS"

How did a nation whose prime minister, Olof Palme, promoted the idea
of "ecocide" on the global stage
[[link removed].]become
one of the premier advertising agents for green militarism? The
problems are not simply external to environmental and peace movements.
The answer to the question tells us a lot about the failures of
environmentalists to systematically accumulate power. These failures
have to do with internal weaknesses and external threats from
complexes of power that integrate economic, political and media
capital. Let's relate these external threats to internal organizing
logic. If complexes of concentrated capital stop ecological progress,
then isn't the creation of ecological complexes based on systematic
accumulation of diverse forms of capital the necessary answer? I have
discussed elsewhere why this is the appropriate if not necessary
response in various writings about left theories
[[link removed]]
of technology, power and social change as well in other research about
the advancement of green transit production
[[link removed]].
Simply deferring to state reform and market mechanisms won't work.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's forthcoming report
[[link removed]], Brad Plumer in _The New York
Times_ explains
[[link removed]],
says that the world is "likely to cross a critical threshold for
global warming within the next decade, and nations will need to make
an immediate and drastic shift away from fossil fuels to prevent the
planet from overheating dangerously beyond that level." A commentary
on this report in Swedish radio on March 26, 2023, noted how crime and
other issues have reduced the public's focus on climate change. Novus,
the poll agency, presented data on their poll regarding the most
important political question in Sweden for March 2023
[[link removed]].
Here they found the following: "Swedes' most important political issue
continues to be the healthcare issue (57%), followed by law and order
(51%). The third most important issue also continues to be school and
education (44%). Energy policy rises again now to fourth place (43%).
Immigration/integration (42%) thus drops to fifth place. When it comes
to the question of the environment and climate, we have divided these
political issues into two so that the respondents have had to take a
position on the climate separately and the environment separately. The
climate (31%) ends up in eighth place – a significant decrease
compared to the previous survey of 11 percentage points, and the
environment (27%) drops to tenth place."

The poll data which suggest that a down-grading of environmental
politics in the face of other pressing concerns simply refers to a
totality in which budget priorities, capitalism, bureaucratic/state
failure, militarism and the unaccountable aspects of technocracy
systematically generate problems. The technocracy represents the
bureaucratic decision-makers who organize policy from above. Most
political parties fail to connect the dots, celebrate the state or the
market, and fail to understand the common root of problems in the
weakness or absence of democratic accountability systems and
mechanisms to advance power accumulation supporting social inclusion,
equitable economic development, and sustainability. These mechanisms
govern the organization of energy, transportation, and the provision
of basic goods like food and clothing. The best way to advance
ecological concerns is to show its relationship with other issues,
e.g. more money for war is less money for alternative energy, social
inclusion and the capacity to reduce the fragmentation that triggers
crime. Far right parties capitalize on failures in integration which
they promote by supporting militarist budget diversions, weakening of
immigrants' capacities, and racist babble that dominates the airwaves.

FROM MILITARIST DYSTOPIA TO ECOLOGICAL IMPERIALISM

People who have closely followed Swedish environmental policy have
noticed that there are important gaps. The divides are not just based
on fuel subsidies, culture wars against wind power and military
forces' opposition to wind power. They are also based on the "social
amnesia" (or displacement of memory) of key environmental thinkers as
documented here
[[link removed]].
 The divide is also defined by the systemic import of goods from
places like China; These imports represent ecological imperialism
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or ecologically unequal exchange
[[link removed]].
  Sweden lets China manufacture dirty products for it. Sweden also
exports jet fighters
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which increase the carbon footprint in countries such as Thailand,
India and Brazil. In the past, Swedish leaders like Inga Thorsson
supported disarmament and conversion to promote ecological goals as
well as a more peaceful world [[link removed]]. Today,
the military industrial complex engages in poster campaigns that
advertise ecological military submarines.

This ecological imperialism is a "blind spot" for some
environmentalists or environmentalists who cannot see the connection
between war and ecocide [[link removed]]. If
the military's big technologies promote ecocide, just as wars
precipitated them, we would expect environmentalists to fight for
disarmament. Disarmament requires the conversion of military
technology into civilian production. John F. Kennedy, President of the
United States, supported comprehensive general and complete
disarmament
[[link removed]].
Some political scientists say that this speech was simply a political
move and Kennedy was not serious. This argument is irrelevant because
Kennedy's speech opened the discursive space to support disarmament,
just like President Dwight D. Eisenhower's speech
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about the "military industrial complex."

FIVE WAYS ECOLOGICAL POWER IS CONSTRAINED

The reduction of ecological power is based on five key principles, one
of which has been explained. First, a memory failure, "social amnesia
[[link removed].],"
where previous ideas are forgotten. The forgotten ideas include a
discussion about "jobs blackmail" in which the advancement of
ecological goals is said to threaten jobs. The problems generated by
the failure to address the potential but not necessary tradeoff
between ecological goals and growth is a lesson already learned by
scholar activists
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within the United States during the 1980s. Yet, this lesson about the
need to integrate ecological and economic goals has not been applied
sufficiently within the ecological movement in Sweden. While the Green
Party has talked about the integration, others promote a zero growth
scarcity that simply provides fuel for extremist parties fueled by
scarcity and austerity. Even the Green Party and others on the left
have backed policies causing economic hardship for those dependent on
fossil fuels or polluting measures. The purchase of electric cars is
limited to those having greater financial means, although a limited
number can use such vehicles as part of a service attached to their
jobs, e.g. taxi drivers.

Second, another problem is created by the institutionalization and
"fossilization" of social movements' driving force. Radical movements
used to shape environmental policy, now much of this policy is
mediated by politicians, corporations, NGOs and the technocracy. Some
companies are pioneers, but sometimes the change is dependent upon
collaboration with social movements. This coalition can bring about
radical changes, e.g. partnership or connections between movements and
wind power in Denmark [[link removed]].
Basically, some movement people become co-opted by the deal-making and
diplomacy required to work with Social Democrats (none of whom could
bring themselves to vote against NATO, another machine supporting
ecological devastation
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which attempts to greenwash a pathway to displace its responsibility
for diverting resources needed to ecological renewal).

Third, systemic social change requires the deployment of mediating and
proactive actors
[[link removed]]
in religious institutions, unions, universities, study circles,
community colleges, civil rights groups, and other actors involved in
resource exchanges (or mutual aid) supporting transformative coalition
politics.  Many environmental leaders cannot bring themselves to
promote connections, however. The environmental movement is too white,
often avoids discussions of demilitarization, and rarely addresses
divestment from polluters (a key focus here must be on banks'
contributions towards climate change
[[link removed]],
but there are no visible campaigns aimed at banks). Nor can the peace
movement demonstrate a connection between social exclusion and
military budgets (in contrast to what Martin Luther King advocated
during the Vietnam War in the U.S.). Social movements are serialized
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where various ideas and groups are disconnected from each other.

The fourth problem concerns a failure to organize through coalitions
from below as opposed to engaging in attempts that petition the
technocracy
[[link removed]].
Ecological theory suggests that changes are needed from the top down
as well as bottom up. Yet change from below is often absent or weak.
Here are some examples: 1) Environmental organizations have a very
weak presence on university campuses, concentrating efforts on a
special green week, but do not showing up systematically on campuses
to solicit and raise money; 2) There is no mobilization to transform
universities to become more green
[[link removed]]; 3) There are no
penalties for leaving lights on in offices and classrooms or failing
to recycle products properly at universities; 4) There are no poster
campaigns that are visible in the public sphere because it is
considered old-fashioned in contrast to the Internet (yet any Internet
intervention has to compete with millions of other websites and
ubiquitous practices of corporations and franchise chains); 5) There
are no mass meeting mobilizations where the whole country gathers in
media-mediated face-to-face gatherings tied to strategic actions, e.g.
boycott grossly unecological products, or forge connections among
issues. The right seized the initiative by linking ecological controls
to higher gas prices and electricity shortages to the left's
abandonment of nuclear power. While the market and decay of nuclear
power plants led to the abandonment of nuclear power, right-wing
politicians systematically mis-represented the truth and blamed left
or ecological parties. Swedish media, particularly on television, did
not forcefully attack the lies. Those paying more for gas did not want
to be economically penalized by taxes. The problems here are the moral
vacuity of the middle class when it comes to paying more for fossil
fuel usage, the absence of even greater state subsidies for electric
cars, and the way in which the state, media, and military championed
subsidies for militarism rather than a green transition. The Social
Democrats' embrace of NATO, war and militarism and failures to
capitalize on the crime issue helped sink their party in the recent
parliamentary election
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The fifth problem concerns a failure to properly organize economic and
media power
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On the economic front, the key effort would be a campaign to invest in
green entrepreneurs, innovators and cooperatives where employees
democratically make decisions.  I recently attended a briefing of
leading Scandinavian alternative energy companies in March (2023) and
did not see many ecological organizations present. Economic democracy
is a way to democratize capital for environmental work
[[link removed]].
I don't hear green politicians talking about it, even when they are
addressing a supposedly "left" audience. When it comes to media power,
the basic approach is to trust that established media will do their
job properly. One idea is to just appear in the media. When _Dagens
Nyheter_ invited Greta Thunberg to edit a special issue of the
newspaper, they thought it would bring change. Nevertheless, this
newspaper has advocated Swedish military commitments and NATO
involvement that represent ecocidal tendencies and budget
restructuring towards militarism. When debates among parliamentary
leaders come about, the media demonizes the Green Party as
inconvenient and a nuisance or threat for the lifestyles of the middle
class. The appropriate response is direct action and protest outside
television stations and other media. Instead, the movement response is
a passive do-nothing, fatalism, sadness and cheerleading by green
politicians whom the media isolates when not demonizing them.

TOWARDS AN ECOLOGICAL SOLUTION THROUGH ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL
RECONSTRUCTION

All these failures indicate that we need a new political party in
Sweden to compensate for incumbent politicians' limitations. A new
political party could address the shortcomings of both right-wing and
left-wing discourse. The survey identified in the link provided here
tries to identify the gaps in Swedish discourse. The goal is to
promote _system change_, not climate change. This link
[[link removed]]illustrates
the issues at stake in Swedish discourse. The incompetence of
contemporary parties suggests the pathway for system change. Of
course, creating a political party before economic and media power is
sufficiently accumulated might not be tactically wise. Yet, organizing
for such a party to address the intellectual vacuum would be very
wise. Ultimately, one needs a social movement and audience
mobilization, that organizes consumption and financial power, that
promotes
[[link removed]]proactive
media power and thus political power
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and supported by cooperative/innovative interventions
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creation of new institutional spaces is an urgent need. Society needs
to be reconstructed. The capacities of individuals to create such
institutions based on their own capacities is a basic principle of
economic and social reconstruction
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Cooperatives are based on these principles of leveraging the power of
consumption, work, finance and rent payments, etc., to build new
institutional spaces [[link removed]] for promoting
social change and equitable development. Reconstruction also requires
that we divest and pressure the banks, oil companies and defense firms
wrecking the ecosystem as I have outlined elsewhere
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(ideas championed by Bill McKibben
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in the U.S. and Sasja Beslik
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in Sweden).

_Note:  This is a slightly revised copy of an article that originally
appeared in CounterPunch
([link removed]…
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_JONATHAN MICHAEL FELDMAN specializes in research related to
political economy, disarmament, green economics and studies related to
democracy. He writes periodically for Counterpunch and xxxxxx. He is
an associate professor at The Department of Economic History and
International Relations at Stockholm University._

* Sweden
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* Ecology
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* Greens
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* Militarism
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* Industrial conversion
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