Beyond Growth or Beyond Capitalism?

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Beyond Growth or Beyond Capitalism?

Wednesday, 15 January 2014 09:09
By Richard Smith, Truthout | News Analysis

This article is a lightly revised and updated version of the article originally published as "Beyond Growth or Beyond Capitalism?" in Real-World Economics Review, issue 53, June 26, 2010, pages 28-42.

Given the relentless growth of global GHG emissions (currently growing at 2 percent per year, up 70 percent from 1990) and ever-higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere (currently at 400 parts per million, up 30 percent from 1990), climate scientist Kevin Anderson at the Radical Emissions Reduction Conference (December 10-11, 2013, at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the United Kingdom) concluded that "Today, in 2013, we face an unavoidably radical future." The International Energy Agency (IEA) says that "the current state of affairs is unacceptable. ... Energy-related CO2 emissions are at historic highs" and emission trends are "perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius, which would have devastating consequences for the planet." In similar vein, PricewaterhouseCooper, the UK government chief scientist, and a growing body of academics and researchers are allying current emission trends with 4-degree Celsius to 6-degree Celsius futures.1 Tyndall scientists drew the only possible conclusion:

We either continue with rising emissions and reap the radical repercussions of severe climate change, or we acknowledge that we have a choice and pursue radical emission reductions: No longer is there a non-radical option. Moreover, low-carbon supply technologies cannot deliver the necessary rate of emission reductions - they need to be complemented with rapid, deep and early reductions in energy consumption - the rationale for this conference.2

How much do we need to cut and how quickly to prevent runaway warming? With the declared aim of keeping average global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius, the Kyoto Protocol required industrialized countries to cut their average greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 5.2 percent below average 1990 levels. For the biggest emitters, this would require cuts on the order of 80 percent to 95 percent by 2050.3 But we have blown right past the Kyoto targets. Instead of falling, developed country emissions have grown, some sharply. One study shows that from 1990 to 2008, emissions from developed country grew 7 percent, led by the United States, whose emissions grew by a whopping 25 percent in just 18 years.4 Meanwhile, China's emissions have doubled in just the past decade, and China is now the world's leading GHG polluter, in large measure because it's producing stuff Americans and Europeans used to produce for themselves - but under less salubrious environmental standards. So we're farther behind than ever, global emissions are soaring and, if we continue on this business-as-usual trajectory, we're headed for that "4 degrees Celsius world" before the end of this century.5 That's why James Hansen, the world's leading climate scientist, quit his job at NASA to devote himself full time to activism, education and getting himself arrested in front of the White House trying to impress the president and the public at large that we need "radical," "deep" GHG emissions cuts - "urgently" because we face a climate emergency.

So Where Are the "Radical" Solutions?

But the problem is how can we ever make deep cuts in consumption of energy (or anything else) in a capitalist economy? An economy in which we all depend upon growth to provide jobs and higher living standards? This is where the "Radical Emissions Reduction" conference fell flat. When the focus turned from the climate science to social science, no one could suggest anything like the sort of truly radical changes, indeed systemic changes, we would have to make to meet the climate emergency we face. Instead, participants rehashed the same tired anodyne nostums that have failed to change anything of substance over the past 30 years - "lifestyle" changes, "shaming people" into consuming less, and the like. Andrew Simms of the New Economic Foundation called for "green jobs" to get "more growth without increasing consumption" (as if!). Naomi Klein, the keynote speaker, called for a "radical movement" to push for "radical emissions reduction." But no one asked the obvious question, which is what would happen to the economy if we actually forced the fossil fuel companies to cut production by 90 percent? Seven of the ten biggest companies on the Fortune Global 500 are oil companies and auto manufacturers. If these companies had to cut production by 90 percent, or even 50 percent, that would mean immediate bankruptcy, economic collapse, global depression and mass unemployment. And not just the auto-oil industrial complex. Fossil fuel use permeates the entire economy: industry, transportation, farming, construction, services, fashion, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, the plastic junk industrial complex, the internet ... you name it.6 There is virtually no sector that is not significantly dependent upon fossil fuels. This means that given capitalism, given our dependence upon these "job creators," the public is never going to support cutting emissions on anything like the scale we need to save the humans - unless someone out there is promising them alternative employment. But who would that be? This is capitalism, not socialism. So growth and the environment seem to be completely at odds. What to do? ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/21215-beyond-growth-or-beyond-capitalism