Transition Sheffield - Discussion Forum

Mobbs proposes that mainstream politics in Britain cannot respond to realities such as global and national inequality, economic collapse, resource depletion and climate change. Any politics that does not endorse the liberal economic consensus, which challenges the concentration of wealth or power, or which doesn't accept that growth and consumerism can be sustained indefinitely, is off-limits. Just as the suffragettes were repressed because their ideas – not their actions – presented a threat to the state, the government and the police must suppress a new set of dangerous truths. By treating protesters as domestic extremists, the state marginalises their concerns: if people are extremists, their views must be extreme. Repression, in a nominal democracy, cannot operate accountably, so the state uses police units which are exempt from public scrutiny.

The imminent peak of global oil production, and then gas and coal production, and the economic difficulties that these trends create, against a background of climate change and the problems that this will create for global agriculture, cannot be avoided. Unless we radically change the values at the heart of the world's economic policies these trends are inevitable – it's a matter of when, not if. This need not be an apocalyptic crisis for the human race if we are able to make changes in global economic policy to accommodate these trends, but such action is essential in the short-term if we are to avoid a convergence of trends that would portend a crisis for humanity. However, if the response of the governing bodies around the globe is to try and seize the remaining resources, erect barriers to co-operation, and become more authoritarian in order to protect the economic power and wealth of their states, then this will merely exacerbate the inevitable crisis that will result from present policy.

For the organisations and groups which support the ideology of the "Western" economic consensus, as this inevitable crisis develops the nightmare scenario is that a contrary point of view will gather support and supplant the present consensus; this will not take place by a revolution or force of arms, but instead, within a democratic society, it only requires enough people to stop believing that the present economic consensus represents their best interests. There is one group in society that has been forecasting the convergence of these trends for the last forty years – environmentalists. In the process they have also developed a number of different practical and policy solutions to these problems, but as in most cases these solutions run counter to the core values of the present political and economic consensus in the West they are a threat to the present consensus. In this way we can see why environmentalists might be singled out as being "extreme"; they have not only correctly identified the problems that face humanity, but they have also developed a set of ideas for how to tackle it.

Those groups who, in Herbert Marcuse's view, have been co-opted into supporting the present system through measures which reinforce its dominance, are not a direct problem (green consumerism, carbon trading, 'Green New Deal', etc.). Such incremental, co-opted ideas will not change the core values of the present economic consensus, and in fact they can reinforce and extend its operation. The difficulty is that, backed up by recent scientific research on the extent of the human ecological crisis, a more "rejectionist" movement is developing (encompassed by issues such as permaculture, Transition Towns or open source information) that seeks to find a separate path for societies to develop in a manner that rejects the core values of the economic consensus (e.g., economic growth). This strand in environmentalism, which also corresponds to the types of individuals/groups that use protest and action within public space in order to convey their message, represents a threat to the present economic consensus. Therefore it should come as no surprise that the State should seek to repress these groups in some way since their actions question the power of the State to be "in control" of the public agenda on these issues.

It is inconceivable that the British government has not considered – in private, if not in public – the risks these trends present. As outlined in section 4 of this report, those with an interest in the well-being of the state and the economy have conducted a number of studies on the impacts of peak oil (and resource depletion in general) and have found the results very challenging to our present ideas of "normality". But if the Government has not considered these issues then this fact alone should invalidate any claim that they might have to "leadership" since, given the weight of evidence, any reasonable person could not ignore the potential hazards of these trends to society.

However if, as we believe, the Government is seeking to deflect any debate or criticism on these issues, and ensure that "non-representative" means of dissent are also closed through limiting the rights of the public to protest, then they are endangering our freedoms and survival. There is a fine line between the current "secretive" role of ACPO, NETCU, WECTU and NPOIU, and the truly "secret" role of a Stasi-style police force that we see in repressive states. Seeking to avoid debate over these vital problems will not make them go away; in fact it exacerbates the problem. Instead what we need is an open debate, but if the State does not wish this then public protest will be our only guarantee that we can, as a society and as individuals, meet these challenges and find a way past the difficulties they will create for us.