With
the National Government debating the merits of the “Emission
Trading Scheme”, we reproduce an extract by Mauro Vanetti’s in
which petit-bourgeois environmentalism is exposed as an non-viable
response to global warming – green "ideologies of abstinence"
simply play in to the hands of the ruling class. What is required is
a genuine Marxist programme on this issue, which is outlined at the
end of the article.
(This
article can be read in full on
http://www.marxist.com/global-warming-deniers-and-climate-change-ideologues-part-five.htm
in reply to climate change denier Brian J Baker)
“The
greatest folly is the ‘what you can do’ fairy tale. […]
we
shouldn’t fool ourselves that individual eco-conscious behaviour can
prevent dangerous global warming» (Sharon
Begley, Sounds
Good, But…,
in the May 5th,
2008 issue of Newsweek)
Marxists
are not in favour of individual solutions to collective problems. We
stand for actions of the working class through its political and
economic organisations as a way of influencing decisively the course
of human history. Any form of individual short cut (or "long-cut"!)
to social change, like boycotting "evil" capitalists in
favour of the "good" ones, "life style" manias,
focusing on petty issues like political correctness in the language
of our leaflets, articles and speeches, individual terrorism or small
acts of sabotage and gratuitous violence, just draws attention away
from the main issue which is, in the last analysis, organising the
workers for the seizure of political power.
Public
debate on the solutions to global warming has been clearly dominated
by the idea that every
little bit helps;
while we are not opposed to the idea that children are taught how to
save energy and recycle because this knowledge and civic
consciousness will be useful in the future socialist society they
will have to build we do reject the false notion, that is
usually imposed on them in schools and TV programmes, that if we all
did our share the problem would magically be solved. Even if "all
of us" did our share, this would still not be sufficient to
compensate for the wider damage being done by the system. Demanding
that the passengers
drive carefully does not make much sense.
This
idea originated in petty-bourgeois circles but was later subsumed by
the bourgeoisie as a comfortable way of unloading blame on the bulk
of the population for something that the top elite is exclusively
responsible for. The petty bourgeois are instinctively prone to
moralistic preaching and love the feeling of being allowed for once
to make a decisive contribution to the progress of society instead of
having to be perennial bystanders as the structure of society
dictates to them. This naturally flows from the position of
shopkeepers and small capitalists, middle-class intellectuals and
well-educated professionals within the capitalist mode of production.
Green nonsense gives some of them a belief system and moral
obligations that well suit their class outlook.
A
typical example of this approach is voluntary
individual carbon offsetting.
This scheme is based on the carbon trading scam that we have already
exposed above, but applied to individuals instead of companies or
states. There is a plethora of carbon offsetting companies that sell
offsetting certificates (indulgences) to "environment-friendly"
individuals, promising that they will compensate for the emissions
they caused by flying or doing other activities that produce CO2
– and of course, these "green" companies make a profit out
of this system, exploiting the good will of a lot of people. Some
airlines already generously offer their customers the possibility of
buying a more expensive ticket if they want to fly without feeling
guilty… You can thus buy your way out of guilt!
Concepts
like "your carbon footprint" are used in the mass media to
convey the feeling that the whole problem is about the sum of
billions of individual emissions. This is consistent with the typical
reactionary approach that blames "human nature" for the
ills of society. The truth is that the contribution of workers’ life
styles to carbon emissions is not very relevant and in any case they
cannot do much to reduce them.
As
we have already underlined, in the European Union the contribution of
transport to greenhouse gas emissions is 21%; this includes planes,
trucks, public transport and luxury cars used by the rich. We can
imagine that private cars used by workers do not influence the
emission budget by more than around 10%, and in any case most of
these emissions come from commuters that have no real choice. Car
pollution and traffic are a problem for other reasons and they must
be addressed with a plan of state-run public transport and also with
a more rational city planning (beyond a certain extent, commuting is
irrational and a consequence of the anarchistic character of
capitalist production), but they are not the main reason for carbon
emissions in the West, Japan or Australia, let alone in less
developed countries.
Small
businesses and households in the EU account for an even smaller share
of greenhouse gases: 17%. Workers’ homes are just a part of this 17%,
and most of their consumption is necessary and cannot be reduced if
they wanted to. Air conditioning is usually taken as an example of
how evil and ecologically insensitive the average American is, but
the truth is that also in a country affected by an A/C mania like the
USA, "Heating
the country releases nearly eight times more carbon" (Wired,
ibid.).
Also power waste due to things like obsolete light bulbs or
appliances is basically to be blamed on capitalism that produces
energy-inefficient commodities with a short life cycle. That way they
sell more and more often, thus upping their profits.
Life
styles can
be changed, but as a part of a social transformation and not on an
individual basis while business goes on as usual. From a Marxist
point of view, forcing such a change onto the workers is even worse
than just preaching it. This is what Green parties aim to do with the
increase of consumption tax on oil, gas, power, etc. For the general
interests of the ruling class and not just those of the "greedy
oil companies", as Gordon Brown (British Prime Minister)
defined them ("also
known as… oil companies"
commented a UK TV programme), this green proposal is welcome because
it gives an ecological flavour to an anti-working class measure.
Especially in the North European countries, this has been used to
force a shift from progressive income tax (they were traditionally
relatively high there) to regressive indirect taxes.
Chris
Huhne, MP, is the shadow Environment Secretary for the British
Liberal Democrats. We cannot but recognise that he is very explicit
in his explanation of why his pro-capitalist party supports those
measures. In a 2006 article, he enthusiastically quotes the following
fact sheet published by the Danish National Environmental Research
Institute:
“Sweden
is undertaking an overall tax shift replacing taxes on income with
taxes on energy, transport, and pollution amounting to several
billion Swedish kronor. Estonia, in 2005, decided to lower income
taxes by 6 per cent and substitute them in part with new
environmental taxes.»
Huhne’s
comment explains (in the typical liberal jargon) their plan and
motivation:
“There
is even a "double dividend" with positive environmental
effects and benefits for employment and competitiveness. […] It is
precisely this green tax switch – from taxes on income from work on
to taxes on carbon emissions and other pollutants – that Britain
needs today. […] We need fairer and greener taxes, but not higher
taxes overall.»
Here
we provide our translation into plain, proletarian English:
“We
don’t really care about climate change but we can use it as an excuse
for something else ("double
dividend").
In fact, it can be used as a justification to pursue a policy that is
good for the bosses ("benefits
for employment and competitiveness").
We can replace direct taxation with indirect taxation ("not
higher taxes overall"),
thus shifting more tax burden onto the working class ("fairer
taxes")
and reducing the taxation on profit ("income
from work").
This is what the British bosses need ("what
Britain needs")”.
As
a matter of principle, we oppose the increase of indirect taxation
like VAT (Similar to GST) because it is a regressive form of
taxation. It hits in a uniform way the wealthy and the poor, while
the traditional left-wing position has always been in favour of
progressive taxation like income tax, imposing a higher rate (not
just a higher absolute amount) on higher incomes.
Indirect
taxation is a return to the Nineteenth Century or, in other words, to
Thatcherism and Reaganomics. It is a well known fact in Britain that
the end of Margaret Thatcher was caused by her attempt to introduce
an extreme form of indirect taxation on a local basis, the infamous
poll
tax
(a per capita fixed tax that made no distinction at all between
different income levels).
This
attack on the living standards of the working class was met by harsh
resistance. The Marxist tendency in Britain, organised at that time
in the Militant tendency within the Labour Party (now Socialist
Appeal),
had a leading role in the mass movement that opposed the poll tax.
Thousands of people refused to pay; mass demonstrations were staged
in several cities, as well as the collective burning of tax bills and
picketing against Thatcher’s bailiffs and their offices.
Opposing
indirect taxation is part of our political heritage and we will not
give it up just because it comes with ecological
pseudo-justifications attached.
It
can be easily shown that the ruling class in the imperialist
countries is pursuing an agenda on fuel prices that is exactly the
opposite of the interests of the exploited. They try to reduce the
oil prices at the source, by squeezing more oil out of the poorer
oil-exporting countries for less money, while at the same time they
increase the price of oil for the average consumer through indirect
taxation.
Today’s
sky-rocketing oil prices are only partially an expression of the low
supply compared to demand for oil. The exhaustion of oil reserves
will become a reality one day, but such a scenario is still quite far
off in the future. The steep rise in the price at source (now over
$130 per barrel) is more directly related to the failure of US
imperialism in Iraq, the strength of Iran and its grip on the
neighbouring Iraqi territory, the loss of control by the USA on
energy producers like Venezuela and Russia, the instability of Saudi
Arabia. The Saudi regime (the weak link of the OPEC) has recently
been doing its best to give some oxygen to its imperialist friends by
increasing production and therefore acting as a scab against tougher
oil exporters like Iran and Venezuela.
Also
"pipeline wars" in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Afghanistan,
aimed at creating efficient long-distance supply alternatives for the
West, have not really delivered. All this can be summed up in one
sentence: the price of crude oil is growing mainly as a consequence
of the difficulties experienced by the White House in keeping its
grip on the former colonial peoples.
What
is not acceptable is that the burden of increasing oil prices is
loaded onto the shoulders of the working class in petrol-importing
countries and – even worse – that energy inflation is further
aggravated by "green" taxes. By the way, since, as
explained above, the energy consumption of working-class households
cannot be reduced in a relevant manner, green taxes on the final
consumer will not really have the effect allegedly hoped for. It will
just result in the exacerbation of daily tribulations for
low-purchasing-power families.
Oil
multinationals and middlemen are to be hit by fiscal measures, not
the workers or "Third-World" exporting countries.
It
is just too easy to blame industrialism and economic development as
such for the problem of global warming. This reactionary stance is
irresponsibly spread by organisations and individuals of various
political leanings and has often leaked into the ranks of left-wing
or progressive organisations, especially by means of the jargon of
the anti-globalisation movement. Among several anti-globalisation
theoreticians, the Gospel of Zero
Growth
or even negative growth has become quite fashionable.
Basically,
they propose to stop the development of the productive forces and
possibly also to destroy some of them – incidentally, we would note
that this is what capitalism usually does through wars in order to
limit the overproduction of capital.
This
insane idea has been criticised several times by the Marxist
tendency. In a brilliant article titled "Sustainable
de-growth": a reactionary idea,
comrade Jérôme Métellus explained:
“[…]
pollution and other risks connected to the energy industry depend,
not on "growth", but on the basic mechanisms of capitalism.
As a consequence, they will not disappear as long as this system
itself is not overturned. Only rational and democratic planning of
the economy and energy resources will allow for a reconciliation
between the development of the productive apparatus and the
ecological equilibrium of the planet. […] Far from reducing
production, a socialist organisation of society will result in the
liberation of productive forces from the fetters of a capitalism in
full decline.”
Jérôme
clearly demonstrates in his article that the theoretical grandfather
of all those theories against economic growth and development is the
petty-bourgeois utopian Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, accused by Marx of
dreaming of rolling back the wheel of history.
De-growth
gurus
like Professor Serge Latouche are always favourably cited by
reformist leaders like Fausto Bertinotti (ex-leader and hijacker of
the Italian Communist Refoundation Party). Unfortunately, what sounds
very smart and "post-modern" in the clean and aseptic halls
of La Sorbonne, has a very poor taste in a "Third-World"
slum, where economic growth is a vital need, or even in a
working-class neighbourhood in the Parisian banlieues
where survival for the proletarians depends on capitalism
"continuously
revolutionising itself" (in
the words of the Communist
Manifesto).
This
little problem is of course recognised by the proponents of
stagnation or de-growth, who are all very wise and intelligent men
and women, and it is replied to with a score of subtle variants of
the anti-growth theories, some of them limiting the need to stop the
economy only to physical goods (but energy and physical inputs are
consumed in the production of any good, physical or immaterial), some
others implying different de-growth patterns for advanced and
underdeveloped countries.
In
the last analysis, this is just Malthusianism or a revival of the
unscientific and discredited "findings" of the Club of Rome
in 1972 (The
Limits to Growth)
when this group of academics and incompetent economists proclaimed
the non-sustainability of unlimited economic growth in the face of
limited resources, predicting an early end to world economic growth
because an intrinsic ceiling would be reached. All these theories do
not address the real point, which is what kind of economic
development we need and how this depends on production relations and
their legal mirror image – property relations. What is unsustainable
is the profit-driven
economy (growing, stagnating or receding), not mass production and
consumption in itself.
The
productivity of labour can compensate for the limitedness of
resources, as happened, for instance, with food. The following graph
shows the constant growth of food production per capita in the last
half century:
Hunger
has clearly a different explanation than Rev. Malthus thought.
A
sense of proportion is also needed when we have this kind of
discussion. Accelerated development of the productive forces in the
last few centuries had a profound progressive content and for the
first time in history made poverty and exploitation unnecessary.
Of course, capitalist development in itself does not abolish poverty
and exploitation (this task belongs to the international socialist
revolution), and in relative terms it could be argued that capitalism
actually intensifies them.
Ecological
sensitiveness, forest conservation (implemented for the first time by
the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution), care for animal
welfare, understanding and accounting of the effect of our action on
the planet… all these steps forward in human interaction with
nature are only possible
as a by-product of economic, social and scientific advancement.
Neglect
of human impact on nature has been around for the whole history of
civilisation. Only primitive communist societies, like those in
prehistoric times, as well as North American natives or some tribal
African communities, display a certain respect for the environment.
Nevertheless, also in that case it is mostly of a ritual and symbolic
character, for example, ceremonies to thank the spirits of wild
animals for providing meat or to apologise to them for the need to
hunt game.
It
is debatable whether industrialism actually extended the scope of
human destruction of nature to a qualitatively higher level, like
some moralistic environmentalists want us to believe. Of course, the
growth of the world population on a planet dominated
by capitalism
has multiplied the potential for "human-caused" damage to
the environment, but that would only be a partial view of things.
Inefficient and ecologically unsound and non-sustainable practices
also existed in the past. If more than 6,600 million of us all lived
like our ancestors did, there is no guarantee that our "ecological
footprint" would be much smaller – but our life expectancy
certainly would.
An
example is the extinction of natural species. This is not a recent
phenomenon at all. On the contrary, what are new are the recognition
of the problem and the concept of biodiversity.
Human
societies caused the extinction of hundreds of species long before
the industrial age, just by hunting, farming and transforming the
natural habitats in many ways. Elephant birds are an example. These
gigantic 3-metre tall birds lived in Madagascar and were completely
wiped out by the actions of the island’s human population before
contact with the Europeans was established.
More
to the point: urban human societies have always used non-renewable
raw materials in a way that harms the environment. Also oil was used,
to make tar for lighting and insulation, although the consumption of
fossil fuel was clearly much lower than it is today. Wood was
collected and burned in a way that implied the destruction of forests
and the release of significant amounts of CO2. That was no
problem for the atmosphere because of the tiny world population, but
it did have nasty hydro-geological side effects at times.
Also
today, underdeveloped societies are not an ecological model, quite
the opposite. It’s been calculated that in the so-called "Third
World" two billion people cook in primitive ways or using
inefficient stoves, resulting in huge consumption of wood and
therefore significant carbon-dioxide emissions (though they are still
giving only a small contribution in comparison with industrial
activities). According to Mr Vijay Modi, an engineer at Columbia
University, a Third World family of five could easily save one ton of
wood every year just by using newer (and more expensive) stoves (10
Fixes for the Planet,
by Anne Underwood, Newsweek,
ibid.).
We have already mentioned the huge impoverished population of the
Niger Delta: the irrational and inefficient usage of fuel there makes
the Delta the highest single contributor to greenhouse gases in the
world.
Frugal,
traditional life styles are clearly not a way out.
Brian
J. Baker found amusingly silly the idea that somebody could ask
himself where does all this fossil fuel come from and question the
usage of non-renewable energy sources. He wrote:
“There
were however those in the early days of the industrial revolution who
questioned the use of stored energy, which had taken millions of
years to produce under conditions of intense heat and pressure, in a
century or two which is a blink of an eye in geological terms”.
We do not
really know who he is referring to here. Refusing to use fossil fuel
is clearly not our position, nevertheless there is a grain of wisdom
in what those unnamed critics said. The point is that capitalism has
massively used fossil fuel since its beginnings, thus building the
whole fabric of world economy upon a relatively unreliable base.
Humans
have used fossil fuel for a very long time. For example, we mentioned
tar above. However, no society prior to capitalism has ever developed
such a complete dependence on fossil energy. And we know that
dependence can easily turn into addiction. Addictions are especially
harmful when the substance you are addicted to is only available in a
limited supply: withdrawal can be experienced. The anarchic nature of
capitalism implies that this mode of production is relying on
non-renewable energy sources as if these were eternal. They exploit
what there is and do not prepare for the future. In this context the
emergence of the problem of global warming has simply accelerated the
crisis that would have occurred in any case at some point. As soon as
the most exploitable reserves are depleted, the extraction costs of
oil, gas and coal would become too high to consider them as viable
energy sources even if emissions were not taken in account.
In
1936, the Venezuelan journalist, writer and politician Arturo Uslar
Pietri coined the phrase "to sow petrol" ("sembrar
el petróleo")
as a metaphor of a correct usage of oil for Venezuela:
“Oil,
instead of being a curse converting us into a parasitic and useless
people, has to be the lucky conjuncture that allows with its sudden
wealth to accelerate and to strengthen the productive evolution of
the Venezuelan people under exceptional conditions”.
Notwithstanding
Uslar Pietri’s pro-capitalist ideas, this concept has been reused
several times in the Venezuelan political debate and can be applied
to the relationship of the whole of humankind with all non-renewable
energy sources as well. The state oil company of Venezuela, PDVSA,
"re-nationalised" by Chávez and now turned into a major
financial resource for the propulsion of the "social missions"
introduced by the left-wing government, declares to have the aim of
"sowing oil" to develop and transform the country and to
alleviate its social problems, in order to eventually free Venezuela
from its complete dependence on oil income. The social improvements
in Venezuela, obtained just with very partial measures that have not
abolished capitalism so far, give us just a tiny example of what
could be possible if fossil fuel, this free gift from the distant
past of our planet, were used to promote a thorough social
transformation of human society.
It
is the alternative one has when one wins a big amount of money at a
lottery: one can spend everything in luxurious cars, expensive trips
and big villas, and when the money is over one will be in big trouble
just to pay for the car insurance or the house expenses; or this same
patrimony can be invested carefully and intelligently (one can use it
to pay for one’s education, for example).
From
a broad historical point of view, capitalism is wasting our fossil
heritage to produce weapons and to finance wars, to delay its
replacement with a more progressive mode of production and support
the obsolete bourgeois institutions, and to preserve scandalous
luxuries for the ruling class. In the process, it is also creating
gigantic ecological problems such as global warming.
From
what I have written, we can derive some political conclusions that
can define a draft transitional
programme on
the issue of climate change. A transitional programme was defined by
Trotsky as a bridge between the current conditions and consciousness
of the masses and the final aim of international socialism.
As
far as climate change is concerned, such a programme can be outlined
as follows:
Expropriate
the commanding heightsof the economy (and the biggest polluters)
without
compensation, in order to give the workers control over the economic
levers of society, a pre-condition for reorganising the productive
system and the life style of the masses (and the rich!) in a more
rational way.
No
confidence in the capitalists’ "treaties"
such
as Kyoto. We denounce the greed of the US imperialists who refused to
sign even the mild Kyoto agreement, but at the same time we expose
the futility of such treaties that will never solve the problem as
long as the world economy is in the hands of the capitalists, and are
actually often used to promote counter-productive measures.
Abolish
"cap & trade" systems
and
implement strict policies on individual plants. This policy must be
enforced at zero cost for the workers; if an employer claims to be
unable to meet the conditions required, the company’s books must be
opened to workers’ representatives and the company eventually
expropriated under workers’ control.
No
to new regressive indirect taxation,
even
if "justified" by alleged ecological concerns. Hit the
profiteers and middlemen, not the average consumer who often has no
choice but to use a car.
No
to "green" sackings.
We
support serious measures against polluting companies but this cannot
be done at the workers’ expense. The alternative is not between
accepting pollution or sacking workers – there is a third option:
sack the bosses! The ecological rationalisation of production must
involve workers’ control and the preservation of every job.
Organise
an international plan for adaptation to predictable, inevitable
climate changes with
public funding and under the control of the population involved.
Promote
a scientific appraisal of the problem.
Teach
the scientific basis for climate change in schools, giving adequate
space to genuine scientific debates on the issue. No brainwashing of
our children with ideologies of inaction and abstinence that distort
their perception of the responsibilities behind this disaster and
make them underestimate the scope of the problem. Counter the
penetration of capitalist arguments within the workers’ organisations
and the Left.
Raise
state funding for renewable and rational energy sources.
The
economic viability of different technologies often depends on
long-term R&D investments that cannot be sustained by
short-sighted profit-driven private labs controlled by energy
multinationals.
Stop
using food as fuel
and
all irrational agrofuel madness (state subsidies and imperialist
"ethanol diplomacy"). Fund public research to develop safe
alternative forms of biofuel (second and third generation), that do
not affect the availability of food in any direct or indirect manner
(such as the use of algae for example, rather than maize).
Climate
change is a global question, and it requires a global solution that
only international socialism can provide. Rational planning of the
economy on a world scale is necessary to tackle the problems posed by
this issue, but this planning can only be organised in a democratic
way with the active participation of the masses. This is what we call
workers’ democracy, and it is our aim.
This
question is directly connected with the control of energy supply and
sources, decisions that have a strategic significance for the future
of the human species. This poses once again the question of the
ownership of natural resources and the means of production.
As
John Reed said in Baku in 1920, only with social revolutions in the
imperialist strongholds as well as in the less developed countries,
"the last foundations of capitalism will collapse, and then the
peoples will endeavour to create a social order in which not only oil
but everything produced by human hands will belong to the working
masses".