According to Wikipedia, Sally Rooney, a writer of novels—Conversations with Friends (2017), Normal People (2018), Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021), and Intermezzo (2024)—was named by Time magazine in 2022 to be “100 most influential people in the world.  Throw in short stories, book-into-television series work, and more, including being a darling of contemporary literature. In my book, this latter aspect is a good thing, but then I—pretension alert!—look at Literary Hub.

A recent item in Literary Hub linked me to a Sally Rooney opinion piece published in The Irish Times. This piece is titled “Sally Rooney: When are we going to have the courage to stop the climate crisis?,” published on November 23, 2024. The deck for this piece is as follows: “Capitalism is driving the destruction of our planet. We have to think outside – and against – the framework of our current political system.” This piece argues that capitalism must be opposed if climate progress is to be achieved.

This sentiment is shared by many and derives from the observation that capitalism cares only for profit, and that is hard to argue against. Certainly, the belief common among capitalists is that profit derives from continuing growth and critics are right to see an ever-expanding consumption is a big source of the danger we face today, as carbon emissions climb ever higher and destructive weather events become more frequent. Rooney uses terms such as “empire” when talking about the entrenched interests of the fossil fuel industry, and while this is taking literary license, it feels right, even if Big Oil exceeds the bounds of nations, so maybe an extra-state “empire.”

She asks what actions make sense in our increasingly dangerous world of climate change, and while she points out street protests, petitions, and public campaigns, she sees these useful in shifting public discourse but falling short in the direct action required. For Rooney, the right direct action—beyond the typical personal choices individuals can make about their own carbon footprint—is to bring fossil fuel capitalism and ever-expanding consumption-based economy to a halt, or, at least, make it so fossil fuel businesses become less profitable and enough so that Big Oil’s influence and negative climate consequences are better thwarted. Yes, she mentions Andreas Malm’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline.

Her anti-capitalist argument in the end, like all good anti-capitalist arguments, comes down to the problem of the Western concept of property. She cites the work of Mayo County Shell to Sea, an organization that tried to prevent pipeline construction by Shell:

Starting in 2005, the campaign picketed the construction sites, prevented workers from entering, and even sabotaged infrastructure, tearing up wooden roads laid over the bogland. Protesters were met with violence and intimidation from gardaí and private security contractors, but they persisted. By 2012 it was estimated that the delays caused by community action had tripled the cost of the project overall. Yes, the pipeline was ultimately built. But in a market economy, costly delays alone can make investment less attractive. If one local group of committed activists can cost Shell €1 billion or more, imagine how much a dozen or a hundred such groups could achieve.

The challenge this argument faces is that of power, including state power, brought to bear against those who interfere with capitalism. I have grave concerns that “a dozen or a hundred such groups” taking action to stop or delay fossil fuel projects would succeed in changing much of anything other than a ratcheting up of violence against such direct actions, and there are plenty of examples of such outcomes.

“What gives multinational corporations the right to pollute the air we breathe, drain our groundwater and exhaust our planet’s dwindling resources – and deprives us of the right to stop them?,” she asks, and in her question lies the answer: laws and regulations have been brought to bear to advantage the fossil fuel industry, and it is changed laws and regulations that can be brought to bear to advantage the public good. Protests and direct action have value, but it is changing laws and regulations that will carry the day. Consider tax policies that no longer give special favor to fossil fuel industries, or that eliminate direct and indirect fossil fuel subsidies, or insist that the cost of externalities of fossil fuel’s pollution and climate-altering be carried by the producers of fossil fuels, or all of the above and more, and you use the concept of a regulated capitalism to address the climate challenge. Delaying a Shell pipeline construction may make that construction more expansive, but a law-based acknowledgement of the true cost of fossil fuels that must be accounted for by Big Oil, and insisting the industry pay these costs, is what shifts capitalism to work on the energy transition.

Today, we have entrenched interests delaying the better world ahead of lower cost clean energy. There’s no natural law that permits these interests to act this way, and human laws can be changed.

The biggest challenge in addressing climate isn’t capitalism, but unregulated capitalism. I’m not suggesting that forming political solutions—by electing pro-regulation and climate progress candidates—is easy, and certainly the ascension of “Drill Baby Drill” Trump is a horrifying example of how hard political progress can be. Still, this was a close election, despite all the claims from the GOP of landslide and mandates. As far short as Biden’s big climate bills fall in the large scheme of things, these efforts show political support for addressing climate change is possible, and efforts seen in other nations and the EU lend further hope.

Shifting to the micro-level, another Sally—Sally Morgan—offers a meditative piece h her substack “The Climate Change Garden.” I subscribe, but I’ll admit, this is not a source I devour regularly, but mainly I use it to track issues around gardening, regenerative agriculture, and related climate change issues, and mainly because the third and fourth books of The Steep Climes Quartet will increasingly feature local regenerative agriculture. Today’s (Dec 04, 2024) substack from Sally Morgan is titled “Soil and the role of dipping ponds in the garden,” with the enchanting deck, “World Soil day, how dipping ponds can harvest water, prevent flooding and influence the microclimate, and one way that plants communicate with fungi.”  She offers a solid summation of soil’s role in climate change, as follows:

• It stores more carbon than the atmosphere and all the world’s forests combined, a massive10 billion tonnes of carbon in the UK alone.
• Healthy soils are natural water regulators. One hectare can hold the equivalent of 1.5 Olympic swimming pools of water, helping to prevent floods and mitigate droughts. In fact, UK soils store more water than all our lakes and rivers combined.
• Soils act as a carbon sink, removing around 25% of the world’s fossil fuel emissions every year.
• Most soil carbon is locked away in permafrost and peatlands of the Arctic and the boreal regions of the Northern Hemisphere, making these ecosystems critical for global climate stability.

There is much more in the substack, including what follows the wonderfully odd heading, “Cracking the code of plant-to-fungi communication,” and a reflection on “the often-overlooked dipping pond—a seemingly humble feature that brings immense benefits to any garden, homestead, or smallholding.”