Capitalist priority to growth and profits over people and planet
from Richard Smith
Given this unprecedented existential crisis one might expect governments would responsibly meet this climate emergency with emergency plans to prevent ecological collapse bold proposals for “deep emissions reductions in all sectors,” for “far-reaching transitions in energy, land, infrastructure, and manufacturing” and so on. After all, the 2018 IPCC 1.5°C report makes clear that on present trends we could be facing the collapse of agriculture in California, the Great Plains, India, China much of Africa, mass famine, submerging cities, destruction of the world’s last forests and worse, possibly as soon as 2040, well within the lifetimes of many leaders today and certainly their children’s and ours. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Yet we hear no bold proposals to meet the challenge from any governments – not from European socialist parties, not from Canadians or Australians (the leading exporters of the world’s dirtiest fuels), certainly not from the Chinese (the world’s largest polluters who, moreover, are now abandoning the limits on coal-burning they just imposed last year in order to restore growth in the face of the trade war),[1] let alone from the Trump administration. Trump’s response to his own government’s prediction of a 4°C warming by 2100 is “the planet’s fate is sealed” so we may as well abandon Obama’s federal fuel-economy standards for cars and light trucks and “burn baby burn”. To the extent we hear any proposals at all, it’s just renewed calls for more of the same carbon taxes, the same fantasy tech fixes like carbon capture and storage that have manifestly failed to staunch emissions to date. Why is that?
The reason why no government dares take the obvious steps to save the humans is because no one has come up with a magic fix to suppress emissions without suppressing economic growth and profits. Given capitalism, economic growth and profit maximization must be systematically prioritized over all other considerations including emissions reduction or companies will fail, the economy will collapse, and mass unemployment will be the result: global warming may kill us in the long run but economic collapse will kill us in the short run. This is the ultimate contradiction of capitalism: We have to destroy our children’s tomorrows to hang onto our jobs today.
hat’s why from the very first climate negotiations around the Kyoto Protocol in the 1990s, all efforts to contain emissions have been subordinated to maintaining economic growth. Year after year, decade after decade, for 21 straight years to COP21 at Paris in 2015, UNFCC annual summit negotiations invariably collapsed in failure and acrimony. Despite the pleas of climate scientists, desperate submerging Pacific islanders, Africans, Indians and others who contribute few emissions but suffer disproportionately from global warming-induced drought and crop failures, no industrial nation has been willing to accept binding emissions limits because they all understand that caps would suppress economic growth. As George Bush Sr. infamously told the 1992 Climate summit, “The American way of life is not negotiable.” And if America will not accept binding emissions caps, why should China? Facing growing protests over their do-nothing annual summits, the only thing negotiators at Paris could agree on was to stop holding their embarrassing annual farces (henceforth they agreed to meet every five years instead) and contrive another “agreement” in which industrial countries pledged to reduce their emissions somewhat some day but are under no legal obligation to do so –prompting James Hansen, the world’s foremost climate scientist, to complain that:
“It’s a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2°C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years’. It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will continue to be burned.”
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Edward Fullbrook and Jamie Morgan
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Maria Alejandra Madi / Jack Reardon
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Edward Fullbrook and Jamie Morgan
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Shimshon Bichler / Jonathan Nitzan
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Real-World Economics Review Blog 
Jesus said clearly, “You must choose your Master; they are mutually exclusive; there are only two… God and Mammon”. So Mammon wins every time… simple. (But try telling that to the ‘christians’ you know.)
“How would a progressive wealth tax work?”by E. Suez and G. Zucman, Feb 5, 2019, 21 pp https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-zucman-wealthtaxobjections.pdf and the Piketty bloghttp://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2019/02/12/wealth-tax-in-america/
I would describe Trump’s attitude and comments as criminally irresponsible.
Again, as long as there is no general interest in changing the rules and winners-take-all goal of the Banksters’ “casino capitalism” game, there can be no systemic change for the better. Obviously, as long as the vast majority of economists and monetary policy makers keep ignoring the downside of the game and the upside of alternatives, there will be no pervasive change of the mind-set of the vast majority of citizens. Hence, I recommend deep consideration of the 2016 BIS working paper 598. After all, it should be painfully obvious that exploitive manipulation of “liquidity” (flow of currency) affects attitudes, behavior and the markets for other currencies, commodities, bonds and stocks.
If you are still unfamiliar with the mechanics, the brief yet articulate explanation of the most potent Real-World example (at https://21stcenturycicero.wordpress.com/fraud/colonial-scrip/ ) is extremely helpful.
Poor Jesus would be fasting for 40 days for Lent now, eating only grains and bread, and refraining from everything but what the earth gave him for the benefit of both sides. Easter chocolates and associated harmful products were certainly not included. The rise of fascism worldwide is denying that he was a jew, let alone a vegan for half the year.
Richard, this is an admirable attempt to lay out a counterfactual future in which Sapiens does not become extinct. I have only a few comments. First, as you say, our current crisis began with Reagan and Thatcher. Historically, why were they elected President and Prime Minister? First, during the 1960s these two vital nations of the elites controlling the world experienced cultural turmoil far surpassing the “lost generation” following WWI and the rule breaking of the 1920s. This was followed by a decade or more of unmatched creativity and change in law, the arts, policing, government, and the economy. If the 1960s were disruptive by challenging not just wars by great powers for economic gain but most of the received culture of both the US and UK, then the 1970s demanded massive changes in women’s place in society, art, music, law, language freedom, fear, and of course love. These two decades ridiculed and ended almost all the security and sense of certainty that had been the mark of “western” civilization since the end of WWI. By the time the 1970s ended little faith in the “system” remained. People felt deserted and adrift. Reagan and Thatcher promised to cure these problems. They never did so and many of their solutions created new problems even more severe than those they promised to cure. And here we stand today. Concerned with both the old problems never dealt with and all the new problems the neoliberal revolution has created. Dealing with climate change today requires we address this 70-year trajectory. To sum your paper, we’re screwed.
Second, convincing people of America and the UK to sacrifice as you suggest will be difficult. Americans in the 1930s anticipated and were prepared to fight a war with Japan. That war was an accepted fact. But most Americans believed the war would be over in a few months with a total American victory. After all the Japanese were little Asians with low intelligence. Americans were opposed to the US becoming involved in European war, evil fascism and Nazism notwithstanding. Many Americans were even sympathetic to the Nazi cause. It was only attempting to defend the white race, after all. Also, many Americans objected to defending the UK; particularly in a war. If Americans had their way that war for the US would have begun and ended with Japan. But Germany jumped to the rescue. When Japan attacked the US at Pearl Harbor, the US declared war on Japan but not Germany. A few days later Germany declared war on the US. This should have signaled to Americans that Germany had conquest ambitions spanning the planet. It didn’t. Making the European war particularly difficult for American forces. Staying out of Britain’s war remained a main complaint of many Americans throughout the war. Consequently, if Americans did not fear conquest by Nazi Germany, why should they now fear climate change?
Finally, beginning with this clear statement, the Allies could have lost the second world war, I suggest a Germany/Japan victory would have prevented our present climate change crisis. First, during the 1940s, 1950s, etc. Germany and Japan would have exterminated at least 25% of the world’s population as “subhuman.” Second, the remaining population would have been forced to live under strict and rigid controls. No time for leisure, no two cars, or sometimes not even one car per family, no tourist industry, only national airlines with restrictive travel, small and efficient cars (e.g., Volkswagen), and no elections where someone like Reagan or Thatcher could have been elected. And if the Nazi regime had determined that climate change was a threat to their control the regime would have funded science and deployed as many slave workers as needed to deal with it. They say freedom isn’t free. In the case of climate change, the price may be the end of Sapiens.
Whatever happened to the compressed air car I heard about a few years back being marketed in India?
Interesting paper. The question is whether buy out or subsidization is the fastest and best route to ecological sanity. I leave the buy out option open in item VI of 10 below
From Wisdomics-Gracenomics: The New Paradigm Theory of Economics and The Money System:
3) A 50% discount to the consumer at retail sale on all consumer items and a rebate of the entirety of that discount back to the enterprise giving it to their customers/consumers by the monetary authority that creates all new money.
4) Extension and addition of the 50% discount/rebate policy to the point of note signing for “big ticket items” like for homes, furnishings, solar power systems, solar and other powered automobiles etc. That would make the cost to the consumer of a $30k solar/non-fossil fuel fueled auto $7.5k.
10) Wisdomics-Gracenomics embraces every possible rationally workable program, product and policy that will make more likely the sanity of ecologically sustainable production, consumption and energy usage. With the end of inflation and individual monetary scarcity resolved by its twin policies of a universal dividend and a 50% discount/rebate at retail sale, and with the end of private money creation no necessary environmental project will ever be “too expensive” again, and all manner of ecologically sane actions can be accomplished including:
I) Robust domestic economies instead of hollowed out ones chained to energy intensive and unnecessarily expensive global supply chains
II) With price deflation beneficially integrated into profit making systems via the 50% discount/rebate policy and a guaranteed reasonable income level via the $1000/mo. universal dividend we will not have to worry about either inflation or unemployment and so rapid re-industrialization in the most high tech, productively efficient and ecologically sane means possible could begin immediately
III) Complete infrastructure upgrade and re-fit to meet the highest energy and pollution standards
IV) Innovative strategies including immersive reality technologies and technological projects like carbon sequestration will help vastly reduce energy dispersal on the planet
V) Doubling income does not necessarily equate with doubling consumption or economic through put, however we should still strive diligently to find innovative economic regulations and engineering strategies to guide consumption toward prudence as it is a cardinal personal and systemic economic virtue. Saving under the policies of Wisdomics-Gracenomics will no longer be a de-stabilizing macro-economic vice, and I suspect that the vast majority of people will quickly adapt to abundance with that prudent economic strategy (saving) for big ticket items and experiences that consequently will not stress or over burden the environment. The fact that the purchasing power of savings will be 100% increased will undoubtedly have a large effect on borrowing for “big ticket items”, and so will also be a major factor tending to prevent a doubling of total productive throughput.
VI) Unlimited availability of financing for the best ecological research, innovation and implementations. Wisdom and graciously wise actions toward planetary sustainability are by definition the ultimate ecological ethic, and Wisdomics-Gracenomics and its policies, structural changes and regulations will be exactly aligned with that effort. This will mean that while keeping competition, innovation and the profit motive preferred and always available, the hastened trend toward sustainability will still be the ruling consideration, and that profit-making enterprise will ultimately bow to that most sane ethic. Species and ecological survival is not an option, it is a commandment of Wisdom.
Finally, the biggest and most essential ecological program is undoubtedly the off-planeting of much of production either in high earth orbit or on the moon which while being the epitome of a massive project cannot and should not be shrunk from. And when affordability is no longer a financial consideration with Wisdomics-Gracenomics…full speed ahead!