Green Capitalism: The God That Failed

[GliderGuider]

Green Capitalism: The God That Failed

In what scientists have called "The Great Acceleration," the engine of global capitalist economic development since 1950 has now engulfed nearly the whole world and accelerated at an ever-faster speed, overwhelming our small blue planet's finite natural resources and limited ability to withstand pollution in a last great fire sale of global upper and middle-class overconsumption. Yet the powers that be, governments and their corporate masters, tell us that growth and consumption must grow even faster if we want to keep our jobs, but "not to worry" because their "green jobs," "carbon taxes" and the like will brake the slide to ecological collapse. This article, originally published January 9, 2014, shows why this patently phony delusion is, nonetheless, so attractive, and why "green capitalism" is a plan for the collapse of civilization and global ecological suicide.

The following is an updated version of an article that originally was published in the Real-World Economics Review. We consider Richard Smith's article foundational to understanding the world we live in. Given its length, several sittings or a printout may be required to complete reading.

As soaring greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions drove global CO2 concentrations past 400 parts per million in May 2013, shell-shocked climate scientists warned that unless we urgently adopt "radical" measures to suppress GHG emissions (50 percent cuts in emissions by 2020, 90 percent by 2050) we're headed for an average temperature rise of 3 degrees or 4 degrees Celsius before the end of the century. Four degrees might not seem like much, but make no mistake: Such an increase will be catastrophic for our species and most others. Humans have never experienced a rise of 4 degrees in average temperatures. But our ancestors experienced a four-degree cooler world. That was during the last ice age, the Wisconsin Stage (26,000 to 13,300 years ago). At that time, there were two miles of ice on top of where I'm sitting right now in New York City. In a four-degree warmer world "Heat waves of undreamt-of-ferocity will scorch the Earth's surface as the climate becomes hotter than anything humans have ever experienced. ... There will be "no ice at either pole." "Global warming of this magnitude would leave the whole planet without ice for the first time in nearly 40 million years." Sea levels will rise 25 meters - submerging Florida, Bangladesh, New York, Washington DC, London, Shanghai, the coastlines and cities where nearly half the world's people presently live. Freshwater aquifiers will dry up; snow caps and glaciers will evaporate - and with them, the rivers that feed the billions of Asia, South America and California. The "wholesale destruction of ecosystems" will bring on the collapse of agriculture around much of the world. "Russia's harsh cold will be a distant memory" as "temperatures in Europe will resemble the Middle East. ... The Sahara will have crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and be working its way north into the heart of Spain and Portugal. ... With food supplies crashing, humanity's grip on its future will become ever more tentative." Yet long before the temperature increase hits four degrees, the melting will have begun thawing the permafrost of the Arctic, releasing vast quantities of methane buried under the Arctic seas and the Siberian and North American tundra, accelerating GHG concentrations beyond any human power to stop runaway warming and sealing our fate as a species.(1)

Yet paradoxically, most climate scientists and even most climate activists have yet to grapple with the implications of their science: namely that GHG suppression on the order of 90 percent in less than 40 years would require a radical across-the-board economic contraction in the developed industrialized countries, and economic contraction is incompatible with a stable capitalism.

In the 1980s and '90s, eco-futurists such as Hawken and Amory Lovins predicted that big technological fixes would make it possible to de-link" or "de-couple" growth from pollution - to "dematerialize" production. Stern makes the same claim in his 2006 Stern Review.(50) Some governments and industries tried. For example, in the 1990s, the British government under Tony Blair tried to get serious about climate change. Parliament passed a major climate-change bill in 2007 that mandated a 26 percent reduction below 1990 levels of greenhouse gases by 2020 and a 60 percent cut by 2050. But as Boston economist Juliet Schor reports, so far "the British approach is failing and dramatically so." That's because, while calling for emissions reductions, the Labour government was also "adamant about growth, arguing that efficiency, clean energy, and a market for carbon will do the trick. The government thought that it could "decarbonize, or sever the link between emissions and GDP.&quot 51) So the environment ministry enacted programs to reduce food waste, plastics consumption and other measures to reduce the "carbon footprint." But to no avail. UK CO2 emissions actually fell during the 2008-09 recession, and the UK was one of the only European successful cases under the first round of the Kyoto agreements. But virtually all those reductions came from phasing out coal, which has been displaced by North Sea oil, and all agree that this gain can't last once the oil runs out. During the Blair period from 1997-2006, despite government efforts, carbon dioxide emissions actually rose. As Schor says, "Refusal to reconsider their stance on growth has doomed efforts to meet even the now scientifically inadequate targets of the 2007 bill. Projected growth in one sector alone, aviation, will likely account for the entire country's carbon budget in 2050." And, as Schor further describes, "de-linking" has fared even worse in the United States:

Since 1975, the US has made substantial progress in improving energy efficiency. Energy expended per dollar of GDP has been cut in half. But rather than falling, energy demand has increased, by roughly 40 percent. Moreover, demand is rising fastest in those sectors that have had the biggest efficiency gains - transport and residential energy use. Refrigerator efficiency improved by 10 percent but the number of refrigerators in use rose 20 percent. In aviation, fuel consumption per mile fell by more than 40 percent, but total fuel use grew by 150 percent because passenger miles rose. Vehicles are a similar story. And with soaring demand, we've had soaring emissions. Carbon dioxide from these two sectors has risen 40 percent, twice the rate of the larger economy.(52)

So time and again, growth outstrips efficiency gains. It almost seems like a law of nature: Making more stuff uses more stuff. Who'd a thunk it?

This is worth reading in its entirety - as the introduction says, the article really is foundational to a full comprehension of what's happening to the world, and how all the well-meaning Hawkens, Lovins, McKibbens, Kleins and Hansens of the environmental movement are far more part of the problem than part of the solution. Their humanist prescriptions for change are little more than emotional palliatives, aspirins offered to treat the headaches of a patient with Grade IV glioblastoma.

[HassleCat]

1. A long and pointless article

It goes on and on about the failures of capitalism, concludes that capitalism will destroy us all, and concludes the only solution is a socialist one-world government. You can read it if you want to, but it's more like a term paper for a 400 level Marxism seminar than a serious analysis.

[GliderGuider]

2. The main failure of the article is the premise that a solution can be found in economics.

Economics of all kinds - capitalist, Marxist, mercantilist or any other type - are simply different ways of making the transformation of the world into waste more efficient. So long as there is any economic activity beyond simple barter the path to a healthy future for the biosphere, including human life, is ultimately blocked.

Like most socio-ecological thinking, the critique is sound but the prescriptions fail. There is a good reason for this failure. There are no effective prescriptions within the confines of civilized assumptions.

[HassleCat]

3. Carrying capacity

People make fun of the old book "The Population Bomb" by Paul and Anne Ehrlich because its predictions didn't come true. Or did they? You are correct. Humans organize themselves into nations, with governments, economic systems, armies, etc. This is safe only on a small scale.

[phantom power]

5. If their timing was off by 50 years, or 100, or 200, that's pretty small potatos.

[sue4e3]

4. I didn't read the article yet ( I have to now )because you made me giggle a little

and I thought I was so far beyond giggling

[kristopher]

9. It isn't a legitimate journal

About the World Economic Review

Special Announcement: Revision of WER Statement of Purpose

Effective immediately, the World Economic Review (now the World Economic Review: Contemporary Policy Issues) is narrowing its focus so as to give it a more clearly defined identity and to provide an outlet for work that is otherwise largely ignored by economics journals. In particular, we will now publish analyses of current and emerging policy issues throughout the globe. Acceptable topics may include but are not limited to monetary, fiscal, trade, development, growth, or sustainability policies or any political or social event that may affect them. While articles can be somewhat more speculative than usual, they must nevertheless maintain a high level of scholarship. We welcome input from a variety of perspectives and will accept both standard-length papers and shorter policy notes. In addition, we will be dropping the open-review process and in favor of a more conventional approach.

http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/about/

[hunter]

6. People like to think their *work ethic* is a good thing, and they expect to be rewarded for it.

When you tell them their hard work is NOT making the world a better place, when you tell them their hard earned recreations are damaging the planet, then they tend to get upset.

It doesn't matter if they are making automobiles or installing solar panels. They don't want to hear that the world would be a better place if they simply stayed home and read a book. They don't want to hear that their own "economic productivity" is harming both the natural environment and their own human spirit.

A few things are essential to a comfortable and rewarding life. Most employment in these modern times is not essential.

[The2ndWheel]

7. It's one of the curses of being aware, for lack of a better term

We want our lives, existence as a whole, to have some sort of meaning. What is the point of the human brain if not turning resources into goods to be consumed? What is the point of mass society unless what you do matters? Why come up with the rules?

[GliderGuider]

8. We need much broader definitions of "what matters". nt