Source: Collective 20
[Collective 20 is a group of writers located in different places throughout the globe. Some young, some older; some long-time organizers and writers, others just getting started, but all equally dedicated to offering analysis, vision, and strategy useful for winning a vastly better society than we currently endure. The members of Collective 20 hope their contributions concerning social, political, economic, and environmental issues will generate more useful content and better outreach through a collective publication effort as opposed to individuals doing so on their own. Collective 20’s cumulative work can be found at collective20.org, where you can learn more about the group, see an archive of its publications, and comment on its work.]
As the world moves deeper into the climate crisis, too many of the official solutions to slow global warming and transition to a decarbonised society stop short of stating the bleedin’ obvious: our economic system is broken and must be replaced. Capitalism is incompatible with life on earth, well human life at any rate. This irrefutable truth is something we all know deep down, whether we can bear to admit it or not.
The level of denial that we are all guilty of, to greater or lesser degrees, along with the fallacy of TINA (There Is No Alternative) that many are wedded to and many more are resigned to, have brought our species to the brink of extinction. We have been so conditioned into believing we can do no better than capitalism that the idea of ditching this rotten system is inconceivable. Even though plenty of us hate it, even though it hurts us and our society, even though it is burning up the planet.
Instead, there is a strongly held view that we can make fixes to the current system and somehow we will be okay. This gives us a lifeline that we badly need, a half-way house of sorts where we can have our cake and eat it: we hold onto the best system there is while also preventing the end of the human race.
The desire for this to be possible is understandable. After all, having to move away from everything familiar is daunting. The unknown is a cold and scary place, change is uncomfortable and intimidating, and many of us would rather it did not have to happen.
That said, something more deliberate and conscious than basic human trepidation is at work here ensuring we cling to this half-way house, and that is the tiny group of elites who own and control the system, who benefit greatly from the system, who are choosing to ignore the dangers posed by the system.
The Herculean efforts of the elites to maintain the status quo have made our economic system incredibly adaptable and resilient. Events and conditions that would kill off most things only cause capitalism to evolve and morph into something even stronger. It is persistent, it survives at all costs and, despite its deadliness, that kind of constant is appealing and comforting to us as humans.
This goes some way to explaining why we have allowed global warming to get to this critical point even though we have known for at least 50 years that human activity, especially economic activity, has been threatening the ability of the planet to sustain human life.
The half-way house, of having our cake and eating it, is everywhere. Governments, political leaders and policy-makers at every level, from local authorities to regions and nations, and international bodies like the EU and the UN, have all manner of visions, charters, strategies and plans, as well as departments, action units and dedicated teams for tackling the climate crisis.
Beware of misleading language
On examination, the official documents produced are oddly similar in language and purpose, regardless of what country you care to look at. They are often very long, peppered with eye-catching graphics and crammed with aspiration and positivity. The content and terminology used is largely inoffensive and on the face of it, reasonable.
So, what then is the problem?
To begin answering that, it is useful to analyse the trends that are observable in these documents.
Generally, they concede that we must take better care of the planet, reduce carbon emissions and waste, and increase energy efficiency and reuse of materials. And the word sustainability takes on magical properties: prefix it to any word and that word is instantly climate-friendly.
‘Climate change’, ‘adaptation’ or ‘mitigation’ are commonly used in these policies but rarely is there any reference to ‘global warming’, ‘crisis’ or ‘emergency’. Always, the environment is subservient to the economy, something to be protected for the sake of the economy and its needs; and therefore, climate change is an economic risk or threat that must be managed like any other economic risk or threat.
Nowhere do the analyses conceive of an economy not driven by profit or based on continuous growth and GDP. The best they might do is argue that economic growth can be balanced with environmental protection through ‘green growth’ or ‘clean growth’. Some even suggest that tackling climate change can be an opportunity to spur economic growth. If economic sustainability is mentioned at all, it is within the context of sustainable growth—surely an oxymoron—and of remaining competitive inside the global free market. Not a syllable is given to the notion that for the global north there must be degrowth. Or that for the global south there must be economic development that allows those countries to break free of Western-imposed poverty and reach fair living standards while avoiding growth and more destruction of the earth—that’s tricky but not impossible when we remove the profit-motive.
Proposed solutions worship the god of technology which they believe will save the day, and as such advise that public money must be directed towards innovation, and research and development. They write about expensive high-tech solutions for many environmental problems, favouring them over low or no-tech natural solutions and ignoring the environmental impact of the development, production and distribution of the “saviour tech”. The reason for this is clear. High-tech solutions would be enormously lucrative for corporates; natural solutions would be so much cheaper and could be implemented by individuals and local communities, cutting out corporates altogether. What good would that be for profit margins and private pockets?
As to be expected, energy features heavily in all of these proposals. They talk of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and hydro as you might expect. But they are fond of other ‘alternative’ or ‘clean’ energy sources which are not always sustainable or renewable. For example, they promote biofuels like biogas from landfill and gasification plants and biomass from energy crops, not to mention nuclear energy and more spending on research into nuclear fusion. And nearly always, the players in energy provision are the big corporations and polluters, not ordinary people or community-owned energy projects. The documents support building large power stations for the centralised grid. Distributed micro-provision is rarely an option. They continue to put faith in fossil fuels such as coal and gas with extractive mining and fracking, with reassurances that their carbon emissions can be offset through carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) technologies. CCUS is still largely in the R&D stage and will require more billions of investment. But, it is the carbon capture method of choice, preferred over simpler, cheaper, natural options. For example, biological carbon sequestering created through forestry, seaweed and soil are rarely, if ever, mentioned. Again, the simple options don’t offer many opportunities for the elites to exploit the situation and make money. And all the while, the fossil fuel and nuclear industries continue to be subsidised to the tune of billions per year, globally.
When it comes to dealing with waste, official reports favour waste-to-energy or energy-from-waste, a neat win-win solution, it is argued, which kills two birds with one stone by dealing with the problem of waste and simultaneously providing a source of renewable energy. What is not to like about that? Well, for a start, waste-to-energy is not renewable energy and as a waste management method, it is environmentally harmful and destructive. It amounts to little more than burying, burning or heating waste usually in large centralised plants. It also ignores the fact that large amounts of the waste generated are a direct result of the capitalist policies of over-consumption, built-in obsolescence and the obsession with embalming everything in plastic. There is scarcely a word about putting responsibility on corporations, building products that last, reducing packaging, or using alternatives to plastic packaging that can be reused or recycled. And never is the most obvious solution suggested: reducing excessive, luxury consumption. Much better to keep producing too much waste and then just turning it into energy. Bet you can guess which approach is the most profitable for the waste management industry.
When agriculture is discussed in governmental policies, the emphasis is on agri-food and industrialised farming. There are no suggestions for the deindustrialisation of farming or reducing meat intake or food waste. Nor is there a possibility of moving away from the use of artificial fertilisers, pesticides and animal and plant breeding technology towards more organic, less harmful and cheaper farming practices that do not rely on fossil fuels and chemicals.
Transport strategies talk of electric cars and public transport fleets and of manufacturing more fuel-efficient vehicles but never of limiting the number of cars produced. Aviation options are also directed towards greater efficiency in both fuel and aircraft. At the governmental level, there is rarely acceptance that the days of on-demand flights for tourism, personal and business purposes have to end, or that the policy of free market globalisation, with its excessive and unnecessary exports and trade miles, is ridiculous.
The existing financial sector has to be dismantled
One of the more egregious proposals centres on how climate mitigation and the just transition can be financed. This goes by many names, including green investment, responsible investment, green finance and green bonds, although ultimately these are simply camouflage for finding new ways to make profits for the usual suspects. The viewpoint of official documents is that current financial institutions can remain intact and at the same time come to our rescue by redirecting money to green investment options. Governments, central banks and decision-makers who support green finance point out that these new investments must be made attractive for investors. That is code for giving investors monetary, tax and regulatory incentives. Naturally, the investors in question are the corporates, the elites, and some of the biggest carbon polluters on the planet.
Average people see disaster and panic or worry about their welfare, the welfare of their loved ones and the welfare of the world around them. For the elites, disaster, whether natural or manmade, is an opportunity to turn a buck. The Covid-19 pandemic is the latest example of this very behaviour. On the one hand, they have created billions in new wealth and benefited from public contracts to deal with the pandemic, as well as tax savings, tax refunds and government monetary programmes aimed at boosting the economy. On the other hand, they have forced employees to continue working or made them return to work under unsafe conditions. The wealthy elites will invest in green projects if they think they can amass more of that other green—money. They will not invest in anything that does not guarantee maximum return. The financial system exists to support that.
Financing the just transition through existing financial institutions is a fundamentally flawed policy. These institutions are responsible for extracting money from the productive economy and ensuring it gravitates towards a small minority of the world’s population to be put to use making them richer. As a result, gross wealth and income inequalities are entrenched and the hegemony of corporations and elites is maintained. The financial crash of 2008 happened because of the unfettered greed and excesses of this system and since then, little has changed. It continues to stockpile vast wealth and the entire sector remains highly unregulated, so much so that many predict we are heading for another crash on the same scale as 2008 or worse.
The financial system as we know it needs to be dismantled and replaced with one that is more democratic and just, that directs credit to socially useful investment. And in the meantime, we can allow it to play a role in tackling climate change, though not the role the climate reports propose. Rather than trying to coax and incentivise the elites into investing in the green revolution and hoping they will toss a few crusts in our direction, or throwing ourselves at the mercy of their humanity when the truth is they do not have any, instead we should level wealth inequality. We should force this small group of individuals to contribute to society the way the rest of us do and use the money recovered to finance the just transition to decarbonisation e.g. to finance renewable energy, mass transit, affordable and low-energy intensive housing, living wage employment, worker-owned cooperatives, affordable childcare, etc. We should regain control of our own money, money held in savings and pensions that currently ends up in being funnelled into private profit-making investment vehicles. We should establish mutual and democratic banks and financial institutions. We should tighten financial and tax regulations to recoup the money accrued at the expense of the environment and of our labour, the trillions lost to tax avoidance, and the billions given away in subsidies and tax breaks.
But back to the question. What is the problem with the policies proposed by governments, political leaders and policy-makers?
Our future must be one without economic growth
So focused on serving the needs of the wealthy elites, most governments, political leaders and policy-makers are stuck in the certainty that ‘there is no alternative’ and their documents lie at the core of that belief. The proposals support business as usual with a coat of greenwash and a nip and tuck here and there. They fail to recognise that economic growth is in direct conflict with decarbonisation, slowing down global warming or redistributing wealth, and that we must eliminate or vastly reduce certain activities altogether.
Figuratively speaking, it is like the earth has been diagnosed with stage one cancer but the doctors have stopped short of recommending cancer treatment to remove the tumour. Instead, they have decided it is enough to cut back a little on the carcinogens and swallow the odd paracetamol. The disease has inevitably progressed to stage three, and still there is no cancer treatment in sight. This story has only one ending if we stay on our current course.
It is time to expose the madness of this position. Decarbonisation that will slow or retard global warming is going to require more than a few tweaks to the system and nods to green investment. It will demand that we jettison our current economic paradigm altogether and replace it with a more socialist, participatory and democratic paradigm that puts social and environmental needs at its centre and massively redistributes wealth. We are only kidding ourselves if we think it can happen any other way.
Many millions of us have already come to this realisation. Recent polls conducted in Britain, for example, showed that just 6% wanted to go back to the economy as it was before the Covid-19 pandemic and 82% wanted to prioritise health and wellbeing over economic growth. Grassroots activists and movements are busy creating and implementing the alternatives to the status quo. ‘Ordinary’ people are light-years ahead of the governments and political leaders in taking these courageous steps.
Despite the heroic efforts of everyday people working at localised levels, there are three hard truths we must face. The first is that our governments and political leaders are a major barrier. They may be pathetic but they hold the levers of power, albeit on behalf of the elites. The second hard truth is that efforts at localised levels are insufficient. Solving the climate crisis will necessitate the end of capitalism and that necessitates action on a global scale through global coordination, planning and regulation. Both of these truths, therefore, make it critical for our governments and leaders to catch up and start working for and with us.
Some might argue that our task then is to speak truth to power. Thanks to the writing of one particular Collective 20 member, that argument has been well and truly buried. Power already knows the truth, and actually most of their waking hours are spent trying to manipulate and hide the truth. Rather than naively believing that by showing governments and political leaders the error of their ways they would suddenly slap their foreheads in realisation and thank us for enlightening them, we must instead pressurise and coerce them into moving in the right direction. How might we do that? By raising the social costs to them and their wealthy masters—a subject explored in a previous Collective 20 article.
Of course, none of this is to suggest that the job of transitioning to a post-capitalist, post-carbon world should happen overnight or by taking a slash and burn approach that rebuilds everything we know from ground zero. That might be tempting but it would be traumatic and even short-sighted. Actually, it leads us to the third hard truth: completely replacing capitalism with the more participatory socialist model alluded to in this article will take more time than we actually have to address global warming. That leaves us with no choice but to work with the materials available to us, however inadequate, and to see the transition for what a transition is, a “process or period of changing from one state or condition to another”. As such, we should find ourselves taking steps of progressive change which recognise and accept policies that may not be suitable for the world we ultimately desire but that will suffice as interim measures.
And as we move along the road to a post-capitalist, post-carbon world, we must be mindful of the pitfalls, and we must not allow our work or ourselves to be hijacked, sabotaged or seduced by those who have only their own selfish, short-term interests at heart.
[INITIAL SUBMISSION: Bridget Meehan | AUTHOR: Collective 20 (Andrej Grubacic, Brett Wilkins, Bridget Meehan, Cynthia Peters, Don Rojas, Elena Herrada, Mark Evans, Medea Benjamin, Michael Albert, Noam Chomsky, Oscar Chacon, Paul Ortiz, Peter Bohmer, Savvina Chowdhury, Vincent Emanuele)]
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