GREEN CAPITALISM: A Failure
Jun 14, 2015
GREEN CAPITALISM:A Failure
Ghassan Karam
“To be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise”
ECOLOGIST: (Leopold)
Leopold *Mill Roegen *Malthus Daly *Zizek Naess *Harvey Hardin *Foster Bookchin *Wilson Mumford *Marx Ehrlich *Goodwin Hansen *Lovelock Diamond *Sagoff Speth *Taintter
References
Total failure at all levels Deal with superficial only Emphasize symptoms Never go to the root Avoid rocking the boat (teach what is known to be false)
ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
Net Primary Production 3/9 Planetary boundaries have been breeched Millennium Ecosystem assessment Study. Lovelock /Hansen /Speth projections Peak Oil Fisheries I=f(P,A,T) Water Scarcity Desertification Ecological foot print
Signs, concepts & indicators of ecological degradation
Solution is NOT in ecology itself.
Apply principle of Specificity.
Call for a radical change in structure that created the problem: CAPITALISM
What to do?
What is it that we wish to sustain? Intergenerational equity Veil of Ignorance Pareto Optimality Free market cannot guarantee sustainability Allocations always favour the present
Sustainability
2nd Law of Thermodynamics
The more we do the less we have
Substitutability vs Complimentarity
Simplicity: Is it possible to revert to it?
Entropy & Sustainability
Popularized by Daly Given rise to CASSE New Economics Foundation Tim Jackson New Economics Institute Goodwin
Basic premise: Constant human population and constant physical output
Steady State: A Possible Way Out
Competition and Tragedy of the Commons New Indulgances (Ex. BAU and organic) Greenwashing (Pretense: Climate Change) Three R’s (Is Recycling the only one
compatable with perpetual growth?) Brown even wrote about a world with no
need for new extracting activities lol. Capitalism, ecological crisis, economic and
financial crisis.
Critiques of Green Capitalism
Growth vs limits Could system be reformed ? (Not if the
privileges of the global elite are maintained) Climate change is the product of a specific
economic system and its negative effects fall primarily on those least responsible for the crisis.
Critique cont.
Green Capitalist( Hawken, Brown, Cairncross, Lovin, Gore…)
Belief to de-couple growth from carbon Efficiency leads to more and not less. De materialization is quite limited Green often creates new problems ( Cut the
amazon to plant sugar cane for organic food stores and farm raised fish; certified wood)
Technological solution
In Us energy intensity dropped but energy usage increased.
EV vs source for electricity
Prius vs Nickel
60% of car pollution is in production
Clean Energy and base load
Green Gone Wrong
Market based solutions have aggravated the problems:
organic eco architecture bio fuels hybrid cars carbon offsets clean coal
Green Gone Wrong
Kyoto failed (Gr. & UK only 2 to meet target) Cap & Trade failed ( because of T. of
Commons) Carbon Tax failed (They were kept too low) Can we decrease carbon foot print and use
non conventional oil? Democrats and Republicans (RR, Bush Sr;
Bush Jr ;Clinton and Obama oppose carbon taxes)
Climate Change and Green Capitalists
His is an “unquestioned belief that the answers to every human dilemma and desire is a gizmo… the very attitude that gave us Global warming to begin with”
How about abolishing obscene excesses, a modicum of equitable distribution? How about asking whether we are of the same specie , members of the same family and citizens of the same community?
Is there a moral obligation to others?
Gore ….
Daily consumption 200 million B. Equivalent Renewables represent 0.6% The above indicates that large cuts are
required but not for Green Capitalists: Sternest 1% cost in UK and Krugman 1.1-3% for US. ( That does not make any sense)
Stern targets 550ppm when Hansen speaks of 350ppm.
550 ppm increase temp. by 3C (That’s where we were 3 million years ago)
Green Capitalism vs Science
Green Capitalists are dreaming View that Max. exploitation and saving the planet are compatible is
a farce. CEO’s max for shareholders and not the public good. Green Capitalists have been trying for 30 years: Eco system is still
collapsing Their diagnosis is accurate but their prescription is wrong Underestimate severity of eco crisis and overestimate de-
materialization They conveniently forget that consumerism is not dispensable. This is a capitalist crisis. It is about mode of production and system
architecture. Capitalist system carries within it the seeds of its own destruction
since growth is not sustainable. Einstein:” Insanity is to do the same thing over and over againbut
expecta different outcome”
Conclusion
There is a crisis of capitalism that manifests itself in Econ. Finance and Ecological spheres.
Green Capitalism is for the Environment as long as it can profit from it.
Easterbrook: “What’s in it for me?”
Green Capitalism is the problem and so it cannot be the solution.
Capitalism cannot be reformed. (It cannot survive on a reduced level of intensity).
Capitalism is root cause, it is the historical roots; it is an infinite project in a finite world.
“Only mad men and economists believe in infinite growth in a finite world.”
Can we afford to wait for the revolution/transformation? No. That is why catastrophe IS the future if we keep our timid responses.
Continued:
Speth:
In the end we need to trigger a response that in historical terms will come to be seen as revolutionary. Only such a response is likely to avert huge and even catastrophic environmental losses.
Continued II