by Richard Decal
Climate scientists are using increasingly apocalyptic language to tell us that we’re hurtling towards planetary disaster. We should have be carbon negative-- sequestering carbon. Obviously, we are many years from being even carbon neutral, much less carbon negative. So the question is not ‘are things going to get worse’ but rather, ‘how much worse are we going to let it become?’
The growing consensus is that we need to take immediate, drastic measures to counteract climate change. One of those measures has to be addressing one of the greatest causes of greenhouse gas emissions: our monstrously wasteful lifestyles.
However, when someone crashed into my car, my insurance company said they wouldn't pay to replace 2 doors and an engine part; instead, it’s better to let it rust away and buy a whole new car (and release ~30,000 tons of CO2 in the process). When my IKEA lamp chord broke, I didn’t have the knowledge or tools to repair it myself. Even the thrift store told me they would throw it out if I tried to donate it.
In a world of planned obsolescence, I live surrounded by failing products, and I don’t have time to acquire the skills and parts needed to fix them all. What is my busy self to do?
At its core, the problem with capitalism is it’s goal is to create ‘economic growth’ rather than improve our lives. All activity which doesn’t create ‘growth’-- in other words, make wall street richer-- has little or no economic value.
In short: capitalist ‘grow forever’ economics + overconsumption + planned obsolescence + lack of a mending culture = mountains of waste and a planet with increasingly extreme climate.
If we are to have any hope as a species we need to repurpose our efforts from pillaging more of the Earth's resources to make new things towards recycling and up-cycling the colossal amount of things we already have.
There won't ever be a silver bullet idea that fixes all of the problems mentioned above, but I propose one that could go a long way. I propose we create up-cycling workshops which bring broken and obsolete stuff back to life. Things that are beyond repair can be recycled for raw materials or used to make art. Refurbished furniture and appliances can be the canvas for creative work. Imagine coming into a up-cycling center with a lamp and an idea and, like as with a tattoo artist, collaborate on a design, style, and placement of an artwork.
I think the perfect place to implement these workshops are today's prisons.
There is a growing call to change our justice system from one which punish criminals to one which that fixes the causes of crime in the first place-- reforming punitive justice to restorative justice. Some prisons have started programs which teach prisoners how to repair cars to provide them an alternative to a life of crime: to join the capitalist economy by giving them marketable skills. Critics said that it would never work: that putting prisoners in a room full of hammers and wrenches would be a disaster. They were proved wrong, and the programs are very successful.
These programs are a good first step towards abolishing mass incarceration. However, all existing prison labor programs still serve to benefit the state (e.g. firefighters and state uniform making) and private corporations (e.g. cotton pickers, 305 cigarettes), and the capitalist economy (ex-prisoners making more new products).
Rather than prisoner labor being used as a source of slave labor for the state and corporations[1], prisoners would much better serve the post-capitalist economy serving in up-cycling centers: becoming masters at salvaging discarded machinery, electronics, tools, and textiles and bringing them back to life and art. In addition to making, they would be involved in hosting workshops for people to come in and and learn DIY/maker culture. The social benefits would go both ways: poor communities would have these goods and services provided to the poor free of charge.
This not only helps improve the standard of living of poor people, but fosters a sense of community between prisoners and everyone around them through increased social contact when people come in to get their clothes tailored to fit them, get their things fixed, or have art made.
Of course, prisoner participation would be on a voluntary basis. And even within the program, everyone should be encouraged to persue their interests, whether they are mechanically, electrically, and/or artistically inclined.
This plan helps some of the thornier problems in ending mass incarceration. Small towns who derive the majority of their income from for-profit prisons could instead derive their income from DIY repair. It unalienates prisoners and brings them back into the community. It helps fill the wealth divide created in part from the police state and mass incarceration.
Ultimately, this network of up-cycling workshops should branch out from incarcerated people serving the poor to become available to benefit society at large[2]. The biggest difference would be that participants will be paid employees and their goods and services will be for sale. If coupled with a consumption tax on all new products, this program will pay for itself. This program can be one of the many ways which we break our culture’s fanatical devotion to consumption and destroying our planet.
[1] As detailed in Michelle Alexander’s ‘The Age of Mass Incarceration‘, the 13th amendment of the constitution basically says, ‘there is no more slavery-- unless the person is in prison.’ Slavery never was truly abolished, just evolved.
[2] Possibly modeled after the Mondragon Co-op.