00:00 Jonathan Neale: I'm going to stand up, which [makes me] feel a bit of a prune after you sat down, but somehow it's the only way I know to keep the energy going. Okay. I'm going to start where I think I'm going to start, as a Marxist and a socialist. Now, where you start as a Marxist and socialist isn't with Marxism, it's not with what the socialists think, it's not with what's the socialist argument. As a Marxist you start with the material reality. What is
00:32 the material reality? And you look at it from the point of view of the great majority — sometimes from the point of view of the ninety percent, sometimes from the point of view of the ninety-five percent, sometimes from the point of view of the ninety-nine percent, because the top 10%, they flop around a bit. But you look at it from the point of view of the working class and the farmers, the great majority of society. We look at climate change, and what do we face in material reality? We face just what [inaudible]:
01:04 we face war, famine, refugees, storms. We face something [that]'s not abstract. If you want to see what the combination of climate change, drought and famine and the resultant war — and enormous numbers of refugees — do to a place over 40 years, look at Darfur, where farmers
01:37 and herders have been killing each other for a generation for disappearing grass. That is what we will face, in different forms, in many, many parts of the world. That's the material reality. There's also material reality about what we have to do about that, how we can stop that happening, or halt it. What we have to do is very simple, and we could do it globally, we could get it done in 12 years. We can do it with a million
02:08 workers — for our country's share — in 20 years; two million workers could do it [in] 12 years. [Doing it in] 12 years globally [?]. Basically, we need to do three things, three big things. One is: cover the entire globe with renewable energy, so it's the only form of energy we use. The second thing is to insulate all the houses, all the public buildings, all the businesses, so they use much less energy. The third thing is to change the transport system so it's overwhelmingly public transport,
02:39 buses and trains, and so it runs on renewable energy. If we do that, we can cut our carbon dioxide emissions by 95% globally. There are many other things, little bits and pieces, which will make a difference, but those are the three main things we need to do. Anybody who has thought about this problem at all knows what we need to do. It's not out of some socialist playbook — it's dictated, it's conditioned, by the nature of physics. That is what we need to do, and
03:09 that is how we will stop global warming. I know this. David Cameron knows it. Obama knows it. Exxon Mobil knows it. Shell knows it. The Koch brothers know it. Everybody who's bothered to think about it knows that that's what has to be done. And that knowledge is what produces what the ruling classes of the world are doing, because when they look at the solution, three things hold them back. First of all, the corporations that will
03:40 die in a renewable energy world, as corporations. If you want to understand British government policy, on foreign policy or on climate change: the largest corporation in the world by sales, Shell, is half British. The second largest corporation in the world by sales — [or] the fourth largest corporation in the world — is British Petroleum. That tells you what you need to know. That's the first thing. The second thing is, everybody knows that
04:11 to do anything about it will require massive government expenditure, will require a decisive break with austerity and neoliberalism. No other way of doing it. And all the leaders of the world and the ruling classes are wedded to the idea that only the market can solve the problems [?]. They have spent 30 years drilling that into us, frightening that into us, and they dare not give it up. So they dare not act to save the planet [or] the climate. The third thing is, they are
04:42 all in desperate competition with each other, and none of the centres of national capital — not the British or the German or the Chinese or the American — wants to make the necessary sacrifices on their own, and they cannot agree. So they refuse to do anything about it. What that means is that the question of climate change is a class struggle. I don't mean that in some abstract sense — that is not what I'm going to [claim] [?]. What I mean is that there's a tiny
05:15 minority, the one percent, who because of where they stand in society cannot or will not do anything; and there are the rest of us, who are slowly realising that we desperately need them to do something. And it is a struggle about who pays and who suffers. That's the nature of that struggle. Now, as we embark on that struggle, we have to be really clear about the weaknesses on our side. When I say our side, I don't mean the people in
05:45 the room, I mean the large majority of the world's population. And what are our weaknesses? Our weaknesses are, first of all, this issue is a time-lapse one — [we have to act] now, before it gets here [?]. Secondly — I don't know how to say this in a way that doesn't sound mean, but I think it does have to be said — this is an issue that has been brought to us by the environmentalists, for which the solutions are socialist. But the
06:16 socialists haven't brought the issue to us, the environmentalists have brought the issue to us, and that means it comes with environmentalist solutions. And I'll be brutal: it won't work. And instead of, you know, socialist solutions that would work, the solutions that most people have are environmental solutions. All credit to the climate scientists, and all credit to the green organisations and the environmental organisations for telling the whole world about this. But we've got some space to
06:48 make up before we can convince the world that we have to do it together, we have to do it collectively, we have to take collective control of our energy. In addition to that, the left globally: boy, are we weak. Boy, are we fragmented. Boy, are we demoralised. Boy, are we small in numbers. Even where we're gaining numbers, we're small in numbers compared to the
07:20 task. We have to be quite honest about this. We have to be honest about what we face there. And I'm not going to talk about how to solve all of those problems, but I'm going to talk about one of them before we finish. Before I talk about that, though, I want to say something about how Marxists and socialists operate. We don't have an analysis which we save and polish until
07:53 the moment of catastrophe hits. We develop our knowledge, our theory, our understanding, our ability to deal with the world, by throwing ourselves into the movements of resistance. The movements of resistance over climate change are nowhere near big enough, but they're a good deal bigger than the number of active socialists in this country. There is an enormous space for us to get stuck into. And we will only — when, if, we hit the
08:29 moment of horror — we will only be listened to if we have been fighting over this for years, if everyone has already heard our arguments about what the solutions are, if we have the respect of the people who know us for having fought about this. Otherwise we are going to be lost. So we put ourselves in the movement, with all of its weaknesses, all of its chaos, all of its joy. We put ourselves in there. I'm
09:02 going to end with two things. One is, I said the left is very weak. There's an underlying reason, I think, why the left is very weak, and it's connected to why the unions are very weak and why the working class is very weak, and it's that we have lost the vision of an alternative. We have lost the vision of a different way to live. For hundreds of years, in different forms, different
09:33 groups of people have been fighting for a different world. In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Russian dictatorship on the one hand, and of the obscene joke the things like the Labour Party and the social democratic parties have become — in the wake of that we've lost the habit of talking about an alternative. So I'm going to talk about, very briefly, what I think socialism
10:04 would be. The first thing to say is: utterly, joyously democratic. Nothing, nothing, nothing like the old dictatorships of Russia or of China. We do not want the socialism of the interrogator, we want the socialism of the prisoners. That's the first thing. Secondly, democratic at work. At the moment we are allowed to vote, but from the time you get to work or school in
10:34 the morning until you go home, you are in a dictatorship. And you know it, from the way [they] look at you when you come in two minutes late. You are in a dictatorship, and you are bullied, and that dictatorship forms every part of our society. It is repeated in the old people's homes, it is repeated in the children's playgrounds, it is repeated in the football team, and it's repeated everywhere. So we break that. We elect our
11:05 bosses at work. We elect the representatives at work who are our democratic government, who are recallable at any time. It would be a world of equality, in which everybody has what they need and what everybody has is equal. It would be a world in which we take care of each other. This was [brought]
11:36 home to me — and I'm almost finished now — I'm a much more hopeful person than I was on Wednesday, because on Thursday, [just] this Thursday night, I went to a demonstration in Oxford which was like nothing I've ever seen before. The president of the Oxford Union, Ben Sullivan, has been arrested for rape and for attempted rape, and while out on bail refused to resign from the presidency. He was supported in refusing to do so [?] by the university and by the Oxford Union. 240 people came for a vigil
12:09 outside the Oxford Union on Thursday night, and it was very quiet and it was very non-violent. And then we sat down in the road, and then survivor after survivor after survivor after survivor got up and said, over and over again: "when I was raped, when I was abused, I told nobody, because I thought no one would stand by me — and now we are all standing by each other." It was — I cannot describe the feeling.
12:40 It was extraordinary. And what I carried away from that was that I would say today that socialism is also that we stand by each other, that we take care of each other. But the forces of this world that would stop us taking care of each other — we have to fight them, and we have to deal with them. But also, just to add, for climate change: we have to take care of each other across the world, because
13:10 we all breathe one air. And by an accident of evolution we are the dominant species on this planet. We have responsibilities and stewardship for every living thing on the surface of this planet, and we are going to lose at least a third of the species if we let climate change go forward. You know, this is the last three sentences. We don't know how long we have before we
13:41 hit true suffering, but it's a very good guess, looking around me, that it's within the lifetime of most of the people in this room. When it hits, I want you to be strong enough to gather people around you, to fight for kindness and for taking care of each other. And I want you to be strong in that way because you've been doing it for a long time before we get there. Thank [you].
## Editorial note
The Oxford Union case the speaker describes was live at the time. Ben Sullivan, then president of the Oxford Union, was arrested in May 2014 on suspicion of rape and attempted rape and released on bail, and declined to stand down from the presidency. In late June 2014 the Crown Prosecution Service announced that no charges would be brought and the investigation was closed. This note is added because the recording preserves an account given before that outcome was known; nothing in the transcript has been altered.
## Corrections
- "**X and mobile** knows it **she'll** know it the **coach brothers** know if" → "**Exxon Mobil** knows it, **Shell** knows it, the **Koch brothers** know it." - "ninety percent **son is to** the point of you that ninety-five percent **sign us for** the point of view" → "**sometimes** from the point of view of the ninety percent, **sometimes** from the point of view of the ninety-five percent" — the escalating series is the structure of the paragraph. - "it's **dedicated** it's conditioned by the nature of physics" → "it's **dictated**, it's conditioned, by the nature of physics". - "if we have the respect of the people who know us for **having fun** about this" → "for **having fought** about this". The captions turn the most demanding sentence in the talk into its opposite. - "boy are we **tweaked**" → "boy, are we **weak**"; "even where we're **baking** numbers" → "even where we're **gaining** numbers". - "who are **recordable** at any time" → "who are **recallable** at any time" — the standard demand, and meaningless as the captions have it. - "it is **repealing** the football team" → "it is **repeated** in the football team". - "the president of the Oxford Union **been Sullivan**" → "**Ben Sullivan**"; "**without unveiled** refused to resign" → "and **while out on bail** refused to resign". - "enormous numbers of refugees **due to** a place over 40 years" → "**do to** a place over 40 years" — the verb of the sentence, not a conjunction. - "they have spent 30 years **really that** into us" → "**drilling that** into us". - "they dare not act to save **the part of** the climate" → "to save **the planet [or]** the climate". - "nothing like the old dictatorships **at** Russia" → "**of** Russia". - "we **let** the representatives at work" → "we **elect** the representatives at work". - "this was what home to me" → "this was **[brought] home** to me". - "the movements of resistance ... are **no where near** big enough" → "**nowhere near** big enough". - **A figure to flag.** He says the three measures would cut carbon dioxide emissions "by 95% globally". Socialist Resistance titled its write-up of this talk "Three steps to cutting CO2 emissions by **90%**", and Alan Thornett, speaking later the same day, also used 90% by 2050. The spoken 95% is kept, but the discrepancy is real and unresolved from the captions alone. - Marked and uncertain: "we face just what **[inaudible]**" (captions: "just what feeling is"); "[Doing it in] 12 years globally **[?]**"; "wedded to the idea that **only the market can solve the problems [?]**" (the captions read "that the market cannot solve the problems", which inverts the claim); "that is not what I'm going to **[claim] [?]**"; "[we have to act] now, before it gets here **[?]**"; "He was supported in refusing to do so **[?]** by the university and by the Oxford Union."