Terry Leahy

http://gifteconomy.octapod.org/

April 2008

I will argue that the changes necessary to halt global warming cannot be contained within capitalism.  The consequences of doing nothing are equally drastic. So what might happen and what are the implications for environmental activists? 

Ecological modernizers

‘Ecological modernizers’ believe that massive investment in new energy infrastructure will soak up the surplus produced by the capitalist economy.  The destruction of old energy technology and its replacement will become the basis for a new round of capitalist growth.  

In popular debate, environmentalist radicals are ideologically driven extremists who seek drastic reductions in material production and consumption.  The modernizers want to preserve affluence through the path of material re-tooling.

Posing the alternatives in this way makes a lot of assumptions about the likely costs and consequences of the material re-tooling necessary.  What if the material re-tooling required is so very expensive and major as to imply a drastic reduction in material production and consumption?

Technological problems

For details on the following, readers should check out my longer article on this topic (Leahy 2008) as well as Ted Trainer’s many writings (Trainer 2007).

Carbon sequestration – would not really make any impact before 2050 – too late. We would quickly use up all suitable sites.  It would only sequester carbon dioxide from power stations – not other uses of carbon fuels.

Nuclear power – high-grade uranium ores would be used in three years. Costs to store wastes long term would be prohibitive. Tonnes of plutonium zipping about the globe – a bomb takes only 10 kg. 

Wind – there is no cheap way of storing or transporting the energy produced by wind. Using hydrogen as storage, the capital cost could be about 11 times that of coal-fired power plus fuel.  We do not even have enough good wind sites.  To supply half Australia’s energy with wind and store it for use, we would need 200 times the area we have in NSW and Victoria with wind speeds sufficient to drive the turbines.

Solar thermal energy with heat storage in molten salt  - with winter sun angles, nights, cloudy days, costs of storage, costs in winter to supply an equivalent amount of power to one coal powered station could easily be more than 15 times a coal-fired plant.

Biomass - a sad joke to replace oil and gas.  To meet current demand in the United States we would have to harvest biomass from 1,162 million hectares - nine times all US cropland and 8 times all presently forested land in the US.

There are all sorts of reasons why these costs cannot come down.  For example, the costs of steel for framework, and glass for solar mirrors are the cost constraint on solar plants. There is also the very expensive conversion of our existing energy, transport and agricultural systems within decades.

How drastic do we have to get?

Current emissions from fossil fuel burning are 6 Gt/y.  Four hundred parts per million is the concentration of carbon dioxide which we would have to aim at to avoid catastrophic effects. To maintain 400 ppm we would have to cut emissions to 0.5 Gt/y by 2040 - a reduction of 92% from present emissions. In per capita terms - shared equally between 9 billion people (in 2050) - fossil fuel energy would be about 1-2 % of present rich world per capita use. The consequence of this energy-scarce regime would be a drastic reduction in material consumption.

The global economy

There are two further factors. 

• A capitalist economy expands continuously. 

Competition between firms reduces the costs of production and requires an expansion in markets. Full employment depends on growth.  At a growth rate of 3% per annum we will have four times the output of products by 2050 and eight times by 2075. With a 4% growth rate that would be 16 times.  To realize the modernizers’ vision we would have to replace almost all our current energy use with renewables, and also provide between 7 and 15 times as much again for a healthy capitalist economy.

• The expansion of consumption in developing countries. 

At the very least, India and China will continue to expand at up to eight per cent per annum.  So, we will have to persuade them to switch to material re-tooling while they are catching up with our affluence. It is hard to see us doing this coercively without a global war.  Or we could reduce our production and consumption to a level that would be sustainable even if India and China reached that level – and keeping it at that point.

So there is no way forward without a drastic reduction in consumption and production. As far as energy is concerned, the reduction has to be maintained indefinitely. The implication is zero or negative growth.  This level of control over the owners of capital would abolish capitalism as an economic system.

What’s new about this crisis?

A common factor in resolving other crises in the capitalist economy was the development of new strategies that provided services at a fraction of their former cost, or provided services never available before – for example the railways, automobiles, and electricity. 

Consider the accumulation crisis of the seventies.  Markets for consumer goods, even in the rich countries, had become saturated.  Most people had a car, refrigerator, television, etc. An overproduction crisis.  How did globalization solve this?  Economies of scale – niche products for affluent consumers across the globe.  Computer assisted manufacturing to reduce costs.  Relocating factories to poor countries.  Containerization.  Casualising work. Reducing waste in production.  Branding to expand markets.  Outsourcing production to cheap supplier companies.  The common thread was that the same tasks could be done much more cheaply. 

By contrast, the switch to green energy is all about substituting cheap ways of producing useful energy with more expensive ways.  It is this simple fact that explains why the capitalist class is dragging its heels to threaten our future survival.

A second difference to the accumulation crisis of the seventies lies in the consumers who must be targeted.  Globalization targeted consumers with a lot of disposable income.  Yet new forms of energy must be targeted to all those who use energy – including all of the poor of developing nations.  To open this market to renewables we can either coerce them into compliance, produce renewables more cheaply than fossil fuels, or subsidize their energy use by taxing the rich countries.  The last is the most likely approach to work but it is hardly capitalism. 

The end of capitalism - scenarios

When faced with this kind of critique, ecological modernizers usually conclude that the capitalist mode of production will continue, even if somewhat drastic measures have to be taken.  After all, where is your revolutionary proletariat?   Most people are still hoping for a future of affluence and growth.  There is little political support even for the Green Parties. 

Yet capitalism could come to a sticky end despite this. A growth economy is impossible to reconcile with a finite environment.   As well as global warming we are also faced with the coming oil shortage, the exhaustion of mineral deposits, the destruction of soils and the depletion of world fisheries, just to get started.  The environmental crisis and measures to fix it will put a major strain on the comfortable lifestyles of the rich countries.  In developing countries, the hope of future affluence will evaporate. Can capitalism survive these political tensions?  Revolution or social collapse are quite possible.

These are the most obvious points.  A less obvious one is to wonder what would actually happen if the ecological modernization vision was to be politically successful.  Given the technological limits I have outlined, we can envisage two broad possibilities. 

• In one, the capitalist class would agree to a new dispensation and direct much productive capacity to saving the planet. 

To appease the working class of the rich countries, they would have to redistribute at least some wealth so people’s real incomes did not fall too far as energy prices went up.  With zero or negative growth, unemployment would increase year by year after an initial period of restructuring. If reduced hours of work were shared around to prevent social tensions, people’s experience of leisure would undermine the authority of bosses at work. To prevent developing countries from using old fossil fuel technologies, governments would have to tax the rich countries and supply energy re-tooling.  Or individual capitalists could donate their wealth for this purpose. 

Is this still capitalism?  I think not.  The capitalist class would be behaving more like a Trobriands Islands chieftainship; extracting surplus value and redistributing it.  Even ordinary people in the rich countries would be getting poorer while their taxes funded new technologies in developing countries.  All this redistribution would be quite outside the norms of the market economy. 

This scenario would be like the end of Feudalism in England. Then, kings and queens reigned, lords and ladies kept their titles and even their land.  But year-by-year, the economy and political realm functioned less and less like Feudalism.  Ecological modernization could mean a similar fate for capitalism.

In many ways this is the most optimistic scenario.  Capitalism does not end through a violent uprising or through a catastrophic collapse.  There is a negotiated change to an economy where people have much more control over their lives at work, in which there are far fewer hours of necessary productive work, in which the most important goods and services are allocated on the basis of need, in which developing countries and rich countries end up at a similar level of affluence, in which we look after the planet and other species.  This is all very attractive but it is not capitalism, everything that made a capitalist economy work has been abolished.

• Or in the second broad possibility, these problems could be resolved coercively. 

New fascist parties would preserve the affluence of the rich and the poverty of the developing countries.  There would be increasing unemployment in the rich countries and the dole would be minimalist.  To maintain environmental goals, the armies of the rich world might attack coal-fired power plants in India and China.  Assassination squads could terminate timber barons cutting forests.  Growth for the great majority would be stalled and party hacks would take over the running of companies.  Is this capitalism?  I doubt it.  This is a form of technocratic feudalism, which would be unable to solve environmental problems in the long term.  It would be a way station on the road to Somalia.

In fact, there is no path out of the present crisis, which leaves the capitalist mode of production intact.  A successful “reform” of capitalism as envisaged by ecological modernists is just another path to end capitalism.  Of course a quite likely outcome is that suggested by Jared Diamond. We will end up like civilizations in the past that have undermined their environment.  A last days flurry of grand projects and expensive wars.  The inevitable collapse in food production.  A corresponding collapse in population.  Finally, the ruling class is massacred by an ungrateful populace.

Implications for activists

What are the implications for activists?  One response is to recognize that capitalism cannot solve environmental problems and work to develop popular support for a new kind of economy. I have no problem with people who are following that path.  But the environmentalist movement includes many strands of opinion and activism.  Many think that if we have to overthrow capitalism first, the whole enterprise is too hard.  Also, we need to stop global warming now - how could we have the time to build a movement to replace capitalism?  It is hard enough to get people to put in a water tank in their backyard!

We cannot really say which of the scenarios painted above is the most likely.  What I am saying is that whatever we do to resolve the environmental crisis we are not going to end up with a capitalist society.  Putting environmental outcomes first is just as likely to bring down capitalism as a campaign to end capitalism.  And doing nothing at all is certain to have the same effect!

With that in mind, working on angles that have some chance of success is probably more rewarding than flogging a dead horse.  Both negation and more positive strategies can work.  No, we will not have a new power station.  No, we will not allow more coal exports. Yes, we will have a world agreement to control emissions and government funding for renewables.  Yes, we will set up alternative localized economies.

• The main benefit in understanding that capitalism cannot solve the environmental crisis

You are not surprised and discouraged by the resistance you encounter. 

• The main problem with the ecological modernizer outlook

You cannot understand why people are being so dim in hanging on to ways of life that are plainly doomed. 

If it is really easy to reform capitalism and bring about a new cycle of growth why is it so hard to get the political will to do this?  The real answer is that what is at stake is the whole capitalist enterprise lock stock and barrel.  The change is as major as the fall of the Roman Empire.  No wonder even small adjustments are fought so intensely.  No wonder there is such a mismatch between the rhetoric coming from government and business and the inadequacy of real action.   This is the terrain on which we have to work.

Further reading:

Leahy, T, (2008) ‘Discussion of “Global Warming and Sociology”, Current Sociology, Vol 56 (3), pp. 475-484.

Trainer, T. (2007) Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain Consumer Society, Springer, Dordrecht