Discussion: For Saving the Earth We Need to Tell the Whole Truth: An Ecosocialist's Response to Richard Smith

Written by Saral Sarkar

Below is a response to an article by Richard Smith. Whilst I don't always agree with Saral Sarkar’s interpretation of ecosocialism in some ways, especially his views on population, this piece is a contribution to the ongoing development of ecosocialist thinking.

In his article,(1) Richard calls upon his readers to "change the conversation". He asks, "What are your thoughts?" He says, if we don't "come up with a viable alternative, our goose is cooked." I fully agree. So I join the conversation, in order to improve it.

Let me first say I appreciate Richard's article very much. It is very useful, indeed necessary, to also present one's cause in a short article – for those who are interested but, for whatever reason, cannot read a whole book. Richard has ably presented the eco-socialist case against both capitalism and "green" capitalism.

But the alternative Richard has come up with is deficient in one very important respect, namely in respect of viability. Allow me to present here my comradely criticisms. It will be short.

Is only Capitalism the Problem?

(1) Richard writes, "Capitalism, not population is the main driver of planetary ecological collapse … .". It sounds like an echo of statements from old-Marxist-socialism. It is not serious. Is Richard telling us that, while we are fighting a long-drawn-out battle against capitalism in order to overcome it, we can allow population to continuously grow without risking any further destruction of the environment? Should we then think that a world population of ten billion by 2050 would not be any problem?

I would agree if Richard would say that capitalism is, because of its growth compulsion, one of the main drivers of ecological collapse. But anybody who has learnt even a little about ecology knows that in any particular eco-region, exponential growth of any one species leads to collapse of its ecological balance. If we now think of the planet Earth as one whole eco-region and consider all the scientific reports on rapid bio-diversity loss and rapid dwindling of the numbers of larger animals, then we cannot but correlate these facts with the exponential growth of our own species, homo sapiens sapiens, the latter being the cause of the former two.

No doubt, capitalism – together with the development of technologies, especially agricultural and medical technologies – has largely enabled the huge growth of human numbers in the last two hundred years. But human population growth has been occurring even in pre-capitalist and pre-medieval eras, albeit at a slower rate. Parallel to this, also environmental destruction has been occurring and growing in these eras.

It is not good to tell our readers only half the truth. The whole truth is succinctly stated in the equation:

                                                        I = P  x  T  x  A

Where I stands for ecological impact (we can also call it ecological destruction), P for population, T for Technology and A for affluence. All these three factors are highly variable. Let me here also quote Paul Ehrlich, one of my teachers in political ecology. Addressing leftists, he once wrote, "Whatever [be] your cause, it is a lost cause unless we control population [growth]". Note the phrase "whatever your cause". 

Ehrlich meant to say, and I too think so, the cause may be environmental protection, saving the earth, protecting biodiversity, overcoming poverty and unemployment, women's liberation, preventing racist and ethnic conflicts and cleansings, preventing huge unwelcome migration flows, preventing crime, fighting modern-day slavery, bringing peace in the world, creating a socialist world order etc. etc. etc., in all cases stopping population growth is a very important factor. Sure, that will in no case be enough. But that is an essential part of the solutions.

Note that in the equation cited above, there is no mention of capitalism. Instead, we find there the two factors technology and affluence. We can call (and we generally do call) the product of T x A (production of affluence by means of industrial technologies) industrialism, of which there has until now been two main varieties: the capitalist one and the planned socialist one (of the soviet type). 

Nothing will be gained for saving the ecological balance of the Earth if only capitalism is replaced with socialism, and ruling socialists then try to increase production at a higher rate, which they must do under the pressure of a growing population which, moreover, develops higher ambitions and aspirations, and demands all the good things that middle class Americans enjoy.

(2) Modern-day old-socialists do not deny the existence of an ecological problem. They have also developed several pseudo-solutions such as "clean" and "renewable" energies and materials, efficiency revolution, decoupling of GDP growth from resource use etc.

Good that Richard rejects the idea that green capitalism can save us. But why can't it? 

"Because", he writes, "companies can’t commit economic suicide to save the humans. There’s just no solution to our crisis within the framework of any conceivable capitalism." 

This is good, but not enough. Because there are old-socialists (I know many in Germany) who believe that it is only individual capitalists/companies and the system capitalism that are preventing a rapid transition to 100 percent clean renewable energies and 100 percent recycling of all materials. 

Thanks to these possibilities, they believe, old-socialist type of industrialism, and even economic and population growth, can be reconciled with the requirements of sustainability. I don't think that is possible, and I have also earlier elaborately explained why.(2) Said briefly, "renewable energies" are neither clean nor renewable, and 100 percent recycling is impossible because the Entropy Law also applies to matter. What Richard thinks is not clear from this article of his. It is necessary to make his thoughts on this point clear.

Is Bottom-up Democracy of Any Use in the Transition Period?

(3) Richard writes, "Rational planning requires bottom-up democracy." I do not understand the connection between the two, planning and democracy. At the most, one could say that for better planning for the villages, the planning commission should also listen to the villagers. But at the national level? 

Should, e.g., the inhabitants of each and every 500 souls village in the Ganges basin codetermine in a bottom up democratic planning process how the waters of the said river and its tributaries should be distributed among ca. 500 million inhabitants of the basin? If that were ever to be attempted, the result would be chaos, not planning. Moreover, how do you ensure that the villagers are capable of understanding the national interest and overcoming their particular interests? Such phrases are only illusions.

In his 6th thesis, Richard sketches a rosy, idealistic picture of a future eco-socialist society and its citizens. That may be attractive for him, me and other eco-socialists. But this future lies in distant future. First we would need a long transition period of contracting economies, and that would cause a lot of pain to millions of people spoilt by consumerism or promises of a consumerist future. 

We shall have to convince such people, and that would be an altogether difficult job. We should tell them the truth, namely that austerity is necessary for saving the earth. We can promise them only one thing, namely that all the pains and burdens as well as the benefits of austerity will be equitably distributed among all.

What to Do About Jobs?

(4) Richard writes: "Needless to say, retrenching and closing down such industries would mean job losses, millions of jobs from here to China. Yet if we don’t shut down those unsustainable industries, we’re doomed." And then he puts the question "What to do?" We can be sure that all people who wholly depend on a paid job for their livelihood, whom we must also win over, will confront us with this jobs question. Let me finish my contribution to this conversation with an answer to this question.

There is not much use talking to ourselves, the already converted. We need to start work, immediately and all over the world, especially in those countries where poverty and unemployment is very high. We know that, generally, these countries are also those where population growth is very high. People from the rich countries cannot simply tell their people, sorry, we have to close down many factories and we cannot further invest in industrializing your countries. 

But the former can tell the latter that they can help them in controlling population growth. The latter will understand easily that it is an immediately effective way to reduce poverty and unemployment. A massive educative campaign will of course be necessary in addition to concrete monetary and technical help.

In the rich countries, contrary to what Richard perhaps thinks, it will not be possible to provide new equivalent jobs to replace those jobs we need to abolish. For such countries, reducing working hours and job-sharing in the short term, and, in the long term, ostracizing automation and labour-saving technologies, and using labour-intensive methods of production instead, are together the only solution. 

That is already known. Another thing that would be needed is to negate free trade and international competition. However, it must also be said openly that high wages and salaries cannot be earned under such circumstances.

We eco-socialist activists must begin the work with a massive world-wide political campaign in favour of such ideas and policies.

Notes and References

1. Smith, Richard (2017) " Climate Crisis and Managed Deindustrialization: Debating Alternatives to Ecological Collapse."

https://forhumanliberation.blogspot.de/2017/11/2753-climate-crisis-and-managed.html

and

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/11/21/climate-crisis-and-managed-deindustrialization-debating-alternatives-ecological

2. My views expressed in this article have been elaborately presented in my book:

Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? – A Critical Analysis of Humanity's Fundamental Choices (1999). London: Zed Books,and in various articles published in my blog-site

www.eco-socialist.blogspot.com

Should the Green Party be affiliated to the Labour Party?

A version of this article has also been published at Left Foot Forward.

I have noticed comments on the Green Left Facebook page, that some Labour Party members are suggesting that the Green Party should affiliate to the Labour Party. The first time that I heard of this idea was when Jon Lansman, Labour member and one of the founders of the Momentum group in the party suggested it last year.

The model that is being talked about is that of the Co-operative Party, which goes back to the roots of the movement in Rochdale, Lancashire, where the first Co-op was formed in 1844, and they became a political party in 1917. As their website says:

‘Since 1927, the Party has had an electoral agreement with the Labour Party. This enables us to stand joint candidates in elections, recognising our shared values and maximising our impact.’

The Co-operative Party has many co-operative retail businesses as members and promotes this form of economic ownership, within the Labour Party and outside. Co-operative Party branches affiliate to their local Constituency Labour Party (CLP). This enables them to send delegates to Labour meetings and provides a process for selecting joint Labour & Co-operative Party candidates at elections. They do contribute to the election expenses of Co-operative (and Labour) Party candidates. 

Members of the Co-operative Party can be just that, or members of the Labour Party as well, but the Co-operative Party does have an independent structure, separate from the Labour Party. As an independent political party, it maintains its own membership, staff, national executive committee (NEC) and policy platform, all of which are independent of Labour’s.

Could this type of arrangement be beneficial to the Green Party? The Co-operative website does state a direct comparison when it says:

‘One approach is that of the Green Party, which has stood in elections for over 40 years. In that time, the Party has secured the election of just one MP, control of a single local authority and no policies turned into law.’

The Co-operative Party, a hundred years old, does have many more elected representatives at all levels of government, including 38 MPs, than the Green Party. Would the Greens benefit from this situation, in pushing our agenda forward? It is worth thinking about seriously, but I can foresee many obstacles.

I think there would be resistance from people in both Labour and the Greens, with Labour perhaps fearing a kind of entryism which always seems to obsess it. Greens may worry about the loss of the party’s independent status and fear that (joint) Labour and Green members from the Labour tradition, would take over the party and compromise its principles.

Although, certainly under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, there are many similar policies advocated by Labour and Greens, but there are also some quite large differences. Labour operates under a fiercely centralised structure whereas the Greens have a de-centralised structure, with no tight control from above. Greens are also free to voice their opinions, which may differ from the party line, and elected representative are ‘unwhipped,’ which is alien to the Labour Party’s tradition. There's Brexit, too.

There is a huge policy difference area over nuclear power and nuclear weapons, where Corbyn is more in tune with the Greens than the majority of his own party. And then there is the question of economic growth, championed by Labour but seen as the root cause of our ecological problems by Greens.

If these hurdles can be overcome by some kind of agreement, which I think is possible, the rewards could be significant for both parties. For the Greens the chance to gain many more MPs and local councillors, and to achieve the kind of political influence that has largely alluded us so far. Time is short of course, with the climate crisis in full swing, action needs to be taken sooner rather than later, and this idea might just do that. Can we wait another forty years to gain a second MP?

For ecosocialists like me in the Green Party, might affiliation to Labour help spread our philosophy to a wider audience?

For Labour, already eyeing up more green voters for the future, this set up would broaden the party’s electoral appeal, especially with younger voters, but others too who are put off by Labour’s centralising nature.

The time has come for both parties to at least explore this idea, to see how it might work in practice. Given the potential benefits that this type of agreement could bring, it would be a shame if the opportunity now opening up goes begging.  

Can Marxism strengthen our understanding of ecological crises?

John Bellamy Foster wrote in the foreward to Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System, by Ian Angus:

‘It’s capitalism and the alienated global environment it has produced that constitutes our “burning house” today. Mainstream environmentalists have generally chosen to do little more than contemplate it, while flames lick the roof and the entire structure threatens to collapse around them. The point, rather, is to change it.’

Foster the author of Marx’s Ecology replies to a critic, ecosocialist writer Saral Sarkar, on metabolic rift, sustainable human development,  degrowth, population growth, and industrialism.

QUESTIONS FOR JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER

by Saral Sarkar

Ecologise, March 17, 2017

Prof. Bellamy Foster is a renowned scholar. If his scholarship is also meant to serve the cause he espouses, he may be requested to please reply to the following questions/comments of a reader of this article:

Of what use is it to replace the commonly used and well understood term “great ecological crisis” through the hardly known and not well understood long Marxian term “metabolic rift in the human relation to the earth?”

There are some more statements/phrases in the article that throw up critical comments: e.g.”Creating a world of sustainable human development …” This caused me to raise my eyebrows. “Sustainable development” has since the 1980s been the buzzword of capitalist development economics. But the term meant nothing new. It was like dehydrated pure drinking water. Of course, Bellamy Foster is using the additional attribute “human”. But “human development” has also been around for long. Doesn’t it mean in plain English sustainable economic growth?

A straightforward question: Doesn’t Bellamy Foster think that Eco-Socialism’s immediate goal should be to initiate a policy of de-growth, a contracting economy, and a contracting population? And the long-term goal a socialist steady-state economy at a low level?

We know how much ecological havoc the socialist Soviet Union and other “socialist” countries of Eastern Europe wreaked. It is therefore not right to say, I think, “It is capitalism … that constitutes our “burning house.” Isn’t it better, because truer, that it is industrialism that constitutes for the last two hundred years our burning house, capitalism and “socialism” being merely two political variants of the same industrial way of living?

AGAINST THE EXPROPRIATION OF THE EARTH:

A RESPONSE TO SARAL SARKAR

by John Bellamy Foster

Ecologise, March 26, 2017

I appreciate Saral Sarkar’s questions regarding my Foreword to Ian Angus’s Facing the Anthropocene. I will attempt to answer his queries as briefly as I can and in the order in which they were asked. I have numbered my responses for the convenience of the reader.

(1) There is no sense in which Marx’s concept of an “irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism” (or metabolic rift), as this concept is employed by ecosocialists today, can be seen as a substitute for the notion of global ecological crisis. Marx’s development of a socioecological systems approach (rooted in the notion of metabolism) grew out of the natural-scientific discussions of his time and prefigured the rise of the ecosystem concept and later Earth System analysis. It is closely connected to our current scientific understanding.

Thus, an article in Scientific Reports in March 2017 refers to the “metabolic rift,” citing Marx’s Capital, in an attempt to address some of our contemporary human-ecological problems. Similarly, scientists in the Anthropocene Working Group define the Anthropocene as an “anthropogenic rift” in the Earth System (or Earth metabolism). Indeed, rather than displacing the notion of global ecological crisis, Marx’s metabolic rift can be seen as adding clarity to our understanding of that very real crisis, and particularly the dialectical interconnections between its social and ecological aspects.

(2) The concept of “sustainable human development” was highlighted in Paul Burkett’s now classic essay, “Marx’s Vision of Sustainable Human Development,” published in the October 2005 issue of Monthly Review. Marx in volume 3 of Capital presented what is undoubtedly the most radical conception of sustainability ever introduced, arguing that individuals don’t own the earth; that even all the people in all the countries of the world don’t own the earth, but that they simply hold it in trust for future generations and must maintain it and even improve it as good heads of the household. He defined socialism as a social formation in which the associated producers rationally regulate their metabolism with the earth in such a way as to promote genuine human needs, while at the same time economizing on the expenditure of energy.

It is certainly possible, therefore, on the basis of classical historical materialism, to develop a revolutionary conception of “sustainable human development”—one which is radically opposed to “sustainable development” as defined by neoclassical economics. Sustainable human development, cannot be taken as meaning sustainable economic growth—a term which from an Earth system perspective is a contradictio in adjecto.

Surely it would be a fatal error for the left to disarm itself intellectually by abandoning contested concepts like sustainability and ecology—or, for that matter, equality, democracy, and freedom—simply because they have been appropriated and distorted in various ways by the dominant ideology. We need to fight for our own perspectives.

(3) Degrowth, in the form in which it is usually presented today, cannot be the principal organizing objective of the ecosocialist movement, since it neither addresses the immediate ecological threat nor engages with the need for structural change in the capital system. Given the planetary emergency, the ecological movement’s primary goal at present has to be one of mitigating climate change, which however cannot be separated from a host of other social and ecological problems.

In the Anthropocene, we are faced with the eventual prospect, if society continues to follow the path of business as usual, of the end of civilization (in the sense of organized human society) and even potentially of the human species itself. But well before that hundreds of millions of people will be affected by increasing droughts, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events of all kinds.

This requires a radical change in the “political and economic hegemony,” as Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research puts it. Anderson also insists on an immediate moratorium on economic growth and on all attempts to spur growth at the expense of the environment. Conservation is needed as well as shifts in resource use, technology, and use values. Fossil fuels have to be kept in the ground.

All of this is in line with what is argued by degrowth theorists. But the whole concept of degrowth has been distorted by the fact that it is generally used to put the dominant concept of economic growth on its head, arguing simply for downsizing the system, or putting it in reverse, without engaging in a full critique of capitalism or the promotion of the revolutionary structural changes that would be needed in confronting the capital system. There is certainly no question that we need to move toward a steady-state economy in Herman Daly’s sense of no net capital formation. The weight of the economy in the rich countries of the advanced capitalist world needs to be reduced.

But we should not make the error of seeing this as just an issue of scale as degrowth theorists commonly do. The entire structure of the capital system itself needs to be overcome and replaced by a society of substantive equality and ecological sustainability. Failure to address revolutionary structural change is the main weakness of the degrowth perspective, which has not yet escaped the ideology of capital. Thus, leading degrowth thinkers like Serge Latouche insist that degrowth in their terms is somehow compatible with capitalism.

(4) It is true that all other things being equal increased population places more burdens on the carrying capacity of the earth. But crude Malthusian perspectives are not at all useful in addressing the ecological problem. It is capital accumulation, not population increase, that is the major factor in climate change. Although carbon emissions have to cease everywhere on earth within the next few decades—i.e., the world has to reach zero net emissions by 2050—the biggest reductions in emissions will necessarily have to occur in the rich countries, where per capita carbon emissions are highest.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that the wealthy countries, which have the highest per capita carbon emissions, are not those countries with the highest rates of population growth. Indeed, the poorest countries with the highest population growth rates tend to be those countries with the least per capita impact on the climate.
Population growth in capitalism is a dependent variable. It is dependent on conditions of capitalism and imperialism in a given state or region, and on such factors as employment, health, education, women’s rights, etc. An excellent book on this topic is Ian Angus and Simon Butler, Too Many People?

(5) The question of whether it is industrialism rather than capitalism that is the source of our “burning house” is an odd one for someone with a connection to ecosocialism to ask. The argument that Sarkal presents here is that because the Soviet Union too did damage to its environment, and it was industrialized but non-capitalist, that we should therefore move away from analysis of historically specific social formations, like capitalism (or formerly “actually existing socialism”), and instead we should just attribute the whole problem to the more general, abstract notion of industrialization.

The same logic if carried farther would lead one to argue that, since pre-industrial societies also destroyed their environments, industrialization is not a sufficient explanation. We should therefore attribute the environmental problem to human society in general. And, then, since humans are social animals, society itself can be considered an insufficient explanation, so we should attribute the ecological problem to the very existence of human beings. Ergo there are simply too many people.

Such an approach is not very helpful in that it removes all the crucial historical elements of the problem, and also our ability to act in rational ways. What is beyond question is that capitalism is a system dedicated to capital accumulation above all.

As Marx put it, the capitalist only knows “Go on, Go on” (Grow, Grow), i.e., M-C-M´… M-C-M´´… M-C-M´´´, ad infinitum. In its increasingly irrational attempts to expand, capital (the capitalist corporations) commodifies everything in existence, endangering humanity and the entire planet. In less than a generation under business as usual this process will take us over the climate cliff.

There is only one possible conclusion: System Change, Not Climate Change!

Eco-Capitalism: Can It Work?

Written by Saral Sarkar

Introduction and Background

Since 2007, the world is suffering from an unending crisis. It is no longer only an economic crisis like many in the past; it has become a systemic crisis, a crisis of capitalism. Parallel to the futile efforts of the politicians to overcome it, many, even non-communists, are asking whether the crisis can at all be overcome in the framework of capitalism. In Portugal, one even hears people saying the country needs a revolution like that of 1974, which not only overthrew the dictatorship but also tried to build a socialist society.

Against this background – in addition to that of the climate crisis, resource crisis and the general ecological crisis – one is asking if there is an alternative to capitalism.

Recently, many people have rediscovered the limits to growth. They have realized that the long age of economic growth and rising prosperity is over. They are now propagating the vision of a "solidarity society" with a "post-growth economy". Of course, there are also leftists whose alternative to capitalism is still socialism, but one that also cares about the environment.

In this discourse, however, the answer to several questions remain relatively vague: What is here "solidarity"? Should a post-growth economy only cease to grow further, or should it contract? 

Should/can a socialism that cares about the environment be based on an industrial economy?

Also in the ecology movement there is no clear conception of the alternative. In the beginning most activists were radical. Then they soon made many compromises with the existing system. They told the ruling elite that they could create many jobs with environmental protection. In the mid-80s, their mottos were "restructuring of industrial society", "sustainable development", and "sustainable growth". Nobody except the communists and socialists criticised capitalism per se. All thought capitalism could be ecologically reformed. Their favourite motto was "eco-social market economy". 

Today, one speaks of "eco-capitalism" or "green capitalism".

Antonio Gramsci wrote in the 1930s: "crisis consists in the circumstance that the old is dying and the new is not emerging" (quoted in Holz & Mayer 2012: 2). We see today that the old, today's capitalism, is dying. But is eco-capitalism the new? The idea is not really new. As shown above, in Germany, the idea exists since the 1980s. In the English-speaking world, Herman Daly had already in 1977 published his book Steady State Economics, in which he maintained that a steady-state economy can be realized within the framework of capitalism. Later, also the terms "eco-capitalism" and "natural capitalism" were used..

In those days, the purpose of the protagonists of this idea was to protect the environment by means of revolutionary technologies. One asserted that it was possible to cut the connection between growth and resource consumption, i.e. to produce more goods and services with less resources. It was hoped that resource-productivity could be increased by factor four or even by factor ten, so that despite continuous growth damage to the environment would go down. However, our way of production and consumption would then have to be changed a little.

But in the meantime the capitalist system too is in danger of breaking down. Politicians and the bosses of the economy must now save both the environment and capitalism. To this end, they have brought forward new ideas and partly realized them. For example, they are massively subsidizing so-called renewable energies. In Europe, tradable emission-certificates, the purpose of which is to reduce the emission of CO2, have been introduced. They are trying to reform and regulate the finance industry. In short, they say capitalism can be both ecological and social. One is again speaking of "green capitalism". For example, Ralf Fücks of the Green Party of Germany has recently published a book, in which he declares eco-capitalism to be the future of the world. He is demanding a programme for green growth on the basis of renewable energies.

Paradigm Shift

But eco-Capitalism, can it work? I don't think it can.

What is the task an eco-capitalist government must fulfil in order to deserve this name? In short, it must lead the economy to sustainability. A sustainable economy is logically one which is based mainly, if not exclusively, on renewable resources. For non-renewable resources would be exhausted sooner or later, and they cause environmental degradation.

Of course, they will never be completely exhausted, for even ordinary rock contains many useful materials. But an industrial economy needs only such natural resources which contain the necessary raw materials (e. g. copper in copper ore) in sufficient degree of concentration and which can be extracted at reasonable costs. In course of time, one after the other, it would not pay any more to exploit particular deposits. (That is already the case with hard coal deposits in Germany). The cause may be difficult geographical or geological location. Or the degree of concentration of the useful raw material in the ore may be too low. That means, the useful non-renewable resources are becoming ever scarcer.

The renewable raw materials (e. g. wood, water) are of course renewable, but also their availability is limited. When the trees in a forest have been felled, one has to wait for years or even decades before the next generation of trees can be felled. And the yearly amount of precipitation is limited by the climate.

These facts compel us to conclude that continuous growth of the world economy is not possible. When the maximum exploitability of a natural resource has been reached (e. g. peak oil), then a zero-sum game begins. Then one economy can get more of a resource only at the expense of the others.

This conclusion has an enormous significance for economic theory and policy. Directly or indirectly, it has unpleasant consequences for all areas of human life. It necessitates a complete paradigm shift, namely a shift from the hitherto prevailing growth paradigm to what I call the limits-to-growth-paradigm. What appears possible in the former, namely unlimited growth of GDP and prosperity, appears in the latter to be impossible. If one accepts this compelling paradigm shift, then one must throw much of received economic theory overboard. Then one must also undertake a radical change in economic and social policy.

Capitalists cannot accept the paradigm shift

If one accepts the said paradigm shift, then one ought to pursue an economic policy that initiates a gradual contraction of the world economy, which will only end when a steady state has been reached. 

After all, everybody wants to prevent that today's growth madness ends in a chaotic ecological, economic and social breakdown. But capitalists cannot accept such an economic policy, because a growth compulsion is inherent in capitalism.(see below). That is why they maintain that sustainable growth is possible and hence also eco-capitalism.

As stated above, protagonists of eco-capitalism place their hope on renewable resources, especially on so-called renewable energies. They believe that by 2050 the whole energy need of Germany – in principle, of the whole world – can be met through renewable energies.

Actually, they already expressed such hopes twenty years ago. Franz Alt wrote:

"Just solar radiation contains about 10,000 times as much energy as present-day world energy consumption; the winds 35 times as much; the growth of biomass 10 times as much; and hydro-power offers half as much … .

Reed grass that can be grown on the fields that today lie fallow in Germany can produce as much energy as all the 21 nuclear power plants of the country. …

The working group 'Solar Energy for Environment and Development' of the United Nations ascertained … in 1991: ' … the total potential of renewable energies is about 10,000 times the current total energy consumption of humanity." (Alt 1993: 6-8)

Alt also asserted that from biomass we could get raw materials for almost everything: houses, cars, every kind of chemical etc. And such materials could be composted (ibid).

And Hermann Scheer wrote in 1999:

"For an inconceivably long time the sun will donate its energy … . And it will do that so lavishly that it could satisfy even the most sumptuous energy needs of the world's humans, animals, and plants experiencing drastic growth. (Scheer 1999: 66)

If such visions were realistic, then, of course, sustainable growth would be possible, and then also eco-capitalism. Thomas Steinfeld wrote in 2008:

"If one believes Schumpeter, capitalism does not need particular resources. It only needs resources. It perhaps does not even need oil. It might instead be willing without any problem to switch over to alternative energies – using the money made on the basis of oil – if the profit is satisfactory. In this total indifference that capitalism shows in regard to the material the economy uses lies considerable hope." (Steinfeld 2008)

Technological Illusions

But such visions are illusions. Elsewhere I have presented a detailed refutation of these visions (see Sarkar 1999). Here I shall only present in short the more important facts and arguments.

In connection with the hope placed on solar energy, Barry Commoner wrote in 1976:

"Like sunlight, the energy of falling rain is widely diffused …, and its gentle force would seem to hold no promise of delivering power sufficient to run the energy-hungry tasks of modern society. … 

What transforms the diffuse 'impractical' energy of the rain into the eminently useful power of the hydroelectric plant is the process of concentration. (Commoner 1976: 132)

Astonishingly, Commoner, a renowned natural scientist, failed to notice a difference between sunshine and rainfall. Whereas raindrops, guided by natural topography, automatically get collected behind a dam, sunshine must be collected by us. Of course, both building dams and manufacturing photovoltaic modules involve expenditure of energy and materials. But in the latter case is, relative to the energy harvest, it is much higher than in the former. That is why solar electricity is very much dearer than hydroelectricity. In 1976, Commoner had actually hoped that solar energy "can also reverse the trend toward escalating energy costs" (ibid. 122).

Moreover, the low intensity of sunshine on the earth's surface is a cosmological constant. We cannot change it. We also cannot do anything about the sun not shining in the night. The wind too does not blow always. In contrast, the energy content of fossil fuels is very much higher and it is available day and night.

Because of these factors it is highly unrealistic to hope that solar energy will one day be able to compete with conventional energies. Yet, because of their potential dangers, we should desist from using nuclear power and oppose construction of new coal-fired power plants. Environmentalists therefore demand that renewable energies be subsidised until they become competitive.

The real problem with renewable energies is however much more serious. If competitiveness were the only problem, the state could, by means of discriminatory taxation, make the non-renewable energies costlier – to the point at which the renewables are competitive. But that would not help. For the production of everything that is necessary for producing and commissioning solar modules, wind turbines etc. – from A to Z – are done till today, for the most part, by using non-renewable energies. If the latter are made costlier, then also the renewable energies would become costlier.

The real problem with renewable energy technologies is their low to negative energy balance – also called net energy, harvest factor and EROEI (energy received on energy invested). The construction of a power plant including production of all the components that belong to it requires input of energy and materials. The power plant must produce in its lifespan more energy than the total energy invested in its construction from A to Z. That is, its energy balance must be positive. Otherwise the undertaking does not make any sense. There is a controversy about whether solar power plants show a positive energy balance (EROEI). Many, including me, doubt that. Such a controversy exists also about some other renewable energies. There is a half-consensus on wind power. Its EROEI is slightly positive – according to Odum, 2+ (cf. Heinberg 2003: 153). I have elsewhere presented the details of this controversy (Sarkar 1999). Here I only want to present some additional arguments for my scepticism.

Due to progressively worsening geographical and geological conditions, the energetic (hence also financial) extraction costs of most raw materials – coal, oil, gas, uranium, industrial metals, rare earths etc. – are continuously rising. It is exactly with such raw materials that solar and wind power plants are built. That means, the energy input required for building such power plants is continuously rising. But the average energy content of sunshine and wind remains unchanged. Such being the facts, the EROEI of renewable energy technologies cannot rise. It will fall – in spite of possible technological developments. Miracles will not happen, although small improvements are possible.

If the EROEI of renewable energy technologies were really 40 to 70, as often claimed by their protagonists, then they would have long ago pushed all the conventional energies out of the market. For, according to Odum, the EROEI of Middle East oil is only 8.4, that of coal from Wyoming only 10.5, and that of onshore natural gas only 10.3. (cf. Heinberg 2003: 153). But they are still demanding subsidies. How can one understand that at all? And why does the German photovoltaic industry panic when the government cuts the subsidies a little? And why did recently – in spite of all subsidies – several solar technology companies in Germany and the USA go bankrupt? These facts indicate that, as Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1978) expressed it, they are,of course, feasible but not viable. That is, the net energy gain, if it is not negative, is too little for the energy needed to build the replacements (of the same sort) when the lifespan of the power plants in question expires. Then it is no use saying that such power plants do not emit any CO2 while in operation.

In the final analysis, the subsidies come from the total income of the whole (world) economy, which, as we know, is driven for the most part by the conventional energies. How can the renewables replace the conventional energies, when they are dependent on the latter? They are parasites. They will die when their host dies.

Another question that must be raised here is why India, rich in sunshine and winds, is still building new nuclear and coal-fired power plants. If solar and wind power plants were profitable, i.e. without subsidies, then Indians could easily build a few thousand of them every year. And why do the Chinese prefer to export their photovoltaic modules instead of using them in China for making the construction of new coal-fired power plants unnecessary? And why do they have to subsidise their solar module exports – the EU Commission has ascertained that – although Chinese wages are much lower than, say, in Germany?

Of course, these are only indications and indirect arguments, no proofs. But they must be considered because the EROEI-figures of researchers are unreliable and contradictory (cf. Sarkar 1999). I think the dispute will be settled in the next ten years through facts on the ground. "In the meantime also renewable energy enthusiasts concede", writes a Green Party intellectual, "that one cannot reckon with permanently profitable solar electricity production north of the Mediterranean Sea (Wiesenthal 2013: 29).

Up to here I have only dealt with the energy question. But an industrial economy also needs metals and other materials, which are in the main non-renewable and hence exhaustible. For reasons stated above also their energetic and financial extraction costs are rising. Their extraction and smelting also cause serious environmental damage. How do eco-capitalists propose to solve this problem?

They do not take Alt's claim seriously that we could get almost all needed materials from biomass. They rather place their hope on raising resource-productivity (-efficiency) and recycling .

As regards resource productivity, there are, since long, conceptions that claim that technological development makes it possible to reduce resource consumption by factor 4 or factor 10 without curtailing, even while raising, the standard of living (See Schmidt-Bleek 1993 & Weizsäcker et al. 1995). I regard all that as illusions (for details see Sarkar 1999). As Fred Luks (1997) showed, if in the next 50 years resource consumption in the industrial societies is to be reduced by factor 10, and if simultaneously the economy is to grow yearly by 2%, then resource productivity must rise by factor 27. That is not realistic. There are simply also limits to technological development of this kind. Most great technological achievements require enormous expenditure of resources.

Also as to recycling, there exist totally unrealistic hopes. Thus, in the 1970s, André Gorz (1983: 79) hoped that "entire" amounts of raw materials could be recycled or reused. Environmentalists often say, garbage in landfills are resources at the wrong place. The most absurd idea in this regard came from Prof. Jero Kondo, at that time president of the Japanese Science Council, He said we should capture both the surplus CO2 in air and CO2 gushing out of chimneys by using solar energy and convert them into useful chemicals, in order thus to solve the global warming problem (cf. Schmidt-Bleek 1993: 80).

But there are also limits to recycling. Energy cannot be recycled at all. Materials can be and are being recycled, but not unlimitedly. The problem is a law of nature, namely the entropy law. Take for example a piece of steel that has been used to make 100 products, which have gone to 100 consumers living in different places. After being used up, they land in different landfills. Even if waste separation is practised there, collecting the small pieces of steel and transporting them to a steelworks cost a lot of energy, material and labour. If a part of the original piece of steel has rusted or has been converted into small particles, then it is practically impossible to recycle it. (See Sarkar 2012: chapter X.3)

Eco-capitalism is not possible

The above exposition shows that sustainable growth is not possible at all. Also Daly's steady-state industrial economy is not possible. For any industrial economy needs huge amounts of non-renewable resources, which would sooner or later be exhausted or become unaffordable. In the foreseeable future, therefore, the world economy will inevitably contract. The current world economic crisis is a precursor thereof (see Sarkar 2012, and Sarkar 2010). But an ecological steady-state economy is, in principle, possible – at a much lower level than today – for it would mainly be based on genuinely renewable resources, of which biomass would be the most important,

But is the transition to such an economy possible within the framework of capitalism? Daly and most eco-thinkers and -activists believe it is. I doubt it, for many reasons:

(1) Of course, capitalism has until recently been able to overcome many crises of every sort. But that was possible because, every time, capitalists could realistically hope, indeed they were sure, that the crisis would end and normality would come back. Today, however, the prospects are totally different: a long period of economic contraction with the certainty of a stagnating economy at a very low level at the end.

Capitalists need hope and a felt relative certainty in order to be willing to invest. When the objective situation is as described above, especially if the states, out of consideration for the future generations and the environment, pursue a general policy of economic contraction, then there is little hope of profit. If the contraction proceeds chaotically with many firms going bankrupt, then there is no relative certainty.

(2) A growth compulsion is inherent in capitalism. In an environment of competition, the motto is: expand or perish. Since no firm wants to perish, since all must expand if they want to continue to exist, a general growth compulsion arises, also for the economy as a whole. For only in a growing economy can all individual firms hope to make profit. And they also thirst for growth.

(3) A big problem is the short time horizon of firms. Sustainability requires showing consideration for the interests of future generations. But, as one manager said, "a company cannot work for the next generation. … We must produce now for the market and make money (Der Spiegel, 9.6.1986; 100f). That is logical. The time horizon "cannot … go beyond the amortization time of capital goods. For profitability calculation … is exactly limited to this time" (Altvater 1986:100).

(4) Sustainability also entails care for other peoples and other species of nature. That presupposes a moral stance, which is not a part of the principles of capitalism. Since the days of Adam Smith, the logic of the system says, one should only care for one's own interests. That is still the rule. That is why capitalists cannot care about the social costs of their business. They must reduce their own costs and externalize the social costs as much as possible. The invisible hand, says Smith, will take care of the welfare of society. Smith did not know anything about the limits to growth. But we know today that the welfare of society is to a very large extent a task of the state, and it will be more so in future.

(5) If the economy contracts, then also the real income of the people will fall. With the intended or unintended closure of many enterprises many jobs will be lost. Without an egalitarian distribution of the remaining socially necessary or useful jobs and of the sacrifices that will accompany the process, chaos and social unrest will break out. We have already witnessed in the recent past several bread riots, water riots etc.. But egalitarian distribution is incompatible with capitalism. That must be a task of the state. Moreover, only the state can decide which enterprises must be closed.

(6) In a sustainable economy, also during the transition to it, there must not be any waste of resources. But that cannot be avoided in capitalism. An individual firm can possibly do that, but not the whole economy. Every overproduction, every production of unsaleable goods, every destruction of still useable goods, half empty trains etc. are waste of resources. The entire advertisement industry is a huge waste. All that must be accepted in capitalism because planning the whole economy is out of the question.

Worst of all is the waste of the labour power of unemployed people. But a reserve army of the unemployed is very useful for capitalists. They almost need it. Also strikes are a waste of labour power. But trade unions need this instrument for countering the power of capital. The mass unemployment that we witness today in South Europe is also making the societies there unsustainable. All that calls for an orderly retreat, a consciously planned contraction, not a chaotic one.

(7) Since economic contraction will (have to) take place on a world scale, world trade also will (have to) contract. In order to prevent chaos and breakdowns, there must be international planning and cooperation in this area too.

For all these reasons I think a good society of the future, one with a sustainable economy, must be a socialist society. But this time an eco-socialist one.

Saral Sarkar is an ecosocialist writer, his blog is here

A Historic Event or a Fraud? -- Critical Thoughts on the Paris Climate Accord

By Saral Sarkar

Considering that so much depends on whether global warming can be arrested soon, it was no wonder that all thinking people had turned their attention to Paris, where on 13^th December the COP21 "successfully" ended, with great jubilation. I too followed the process through the media.

Positive and Negative Reactions

A day after, I read the following comments: (1) "Today is a historic day: as tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Paris, politicians finalized a major new global climate agreement". And (2) "It’s a fraud really, a fake,”… “It’s just bullshit…"¹ The first was made by May Boeve, the US national organizer of 350.org, a big NGO, that is playing a leading role in the climate justice movement, the second by James Hansen, a former NASA scientist, considered the father of climate change awareness. Which one can we regard as the correct assessment?

Given that nobody in my position has the time and energy to read all the reports and comments on the COP21, I hope that my readers would forgive me if I have overlooked some important point in the agreement or an important comment on it. But fairness demands that I also mention a middle position, for example that of Thomas Friedman, a liberal columnist of the New York Times. He wrote:"I had low expectations for the U.N. climate meeting, and it met all of them – beautifully. I say that without cynicism. Any global conference that includes so many countries can’t be expected to agree on much more than the lowest common denominator."²

That is understandable. As far as I could follow, nobody had big expectations. But then I do not understand how May and other prominent people of big NGOs can be so enthusiastic about it. Bill McKibben wrote: "With the climate talks in Paris now over, the world has set itself a serious goal." ³ 

I have doubts. Was the goal really set seriously? Friedman wrote: "But the fact that the lowest common denominator is now so high [he means the target 1.5⁰ Celcius] – a willingness by 188 countries to offer plans to steadily and verifiably reduce their carbon emissions – means we still have a chance." ² Again I have doubts. I would very much like to agree with Boeve, McKibben, and Friedman. But at present at least, I cannot, for reasons I shall present below.

Why Call it a Fraud?

I too think, like Hansen, the accord was a fraud, but for reasons very different from those of his. I think it was only because they were afraid of being branded as the guilty in case the COP21 failed to reach an agreement that the major CO₂ emitter countries reluctantly decided to sign this very weak paper. But paper, as the Germans say, is patient. If you want evidence, then look at the position with which the government of India went to Paris. Only a few months before the COP21 began, the government of India had announced the policy decision to double India's coal production in the next 5 years. Just a few days before he left for Paris, Mr. Javadekar, India's environment minister, had said in an interview: "I'm asking the developed world to vacate the carbon space so that we can park our development."⁴

Retorting to US Secretary of State John Kerry's criticism of India's decision to double its coal production, Javadekar had remarked it was "absolutely unfair and unacceptable," especially since the CO₂ reduction targets announced by the developed countries would fail to arrest the climate change crisis, which they had a historical responsibility of fixing after a century of pumping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. He also warned the Americans against "bullying" India.⁴

Or take the case of Norway, very rich in oil and gas. Just twelve days after they signed the Paris accord, the prime minister of the country said:"We believe that in a situation in which we shall have attained the goal of Paris, there will be demand for Norwegian oil and gas."⁵ So they are continuing with all the plans and projects for extracting oil and gas from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. While claiming that they want to protect the Arctic from the effects of global warming, they are speculating on the melting of the arctic ice that will make more access to oil and gas possible. It seems they are saying (in German): Wasch mir den Pelz aber mach mich nicht nass, or (in English): We want to eat the cake and have it too.

These are actually irreconcilable positions. We can formulate them as two most fundamental controversial questions: (1) Should the underdeveloped countries be allowed to develop their economies to the level reached by the USA or Germany? (2) And must the economies of the developed countries be scaled down, in order to vacate the carbon space in favor of the former? In Paris, these questions were probably not put on the table in these stark terms. In the interview referred to above, Mr. Javedkar, while asserting India's right – implicitly the right of all underdeveloped countries – to development, did not raise the second question. The Paris accord too recognizes all underdeveloped countries' "right to development". It "… aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty, … " (Article 2). But it does not mention the second question.

It appears that all participants in COP21, the big and small environment NGOs, publicists, and activists take it as a matter of course that the answer to the first question is Yes, and that to the second is No. The controversy was just papered over. It is simply taken for granted that a deus ex machina, namely technological development, would enable humankind to solve the problem of global warming without causing any pain to anybody, and that it only needs some more time and large investments in renewable energies and efficiency-raising technologies. In the rich, developed countries, a large part of the hope of technology optimists is placed on the carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, although not even its feasibility has yet been established. Bill Mckibben, founder and leader of 350.org, charts the strategy for the coming years.⁶ The state(s) must do the following:

"You’ve got to stop fracking right away … . You have to start installing solar panels and windmills at a breakneck pace – and all over the world. The huge subsidies doled out to fossil fuel have to end yesterday, and the huge subsidies to renewable energy had better begin tomorrow. You have to raise the price of carbon steeply and quickly, so everyone gets a clear signal to get off of it."

And he lays down the task of the movement as follows:

"There can be no complacency after the Paris talks. Hitting even the 1.5C target will need drastic, rapid action. Think of the climate movement as personal trainers – for the next few years our job is to yell and scream at governments everywhere to get up off the couch."

The most popular article of faith of environmental NGOs and activists (not of governments) is that – given the right policy decisions such as those laid down by McKibben in the above quote, and correspondingly large amounts of state subsidies – it would be possible in two to three decades to meet 100 percent of humanity's energy needs by means of renewable energy technologies, so that burning fossil fuels would not be necessary at all; there would also be no need for the CCS technology.

Hansen calls the accord a fraud, mainly because he sees no concrete action plan in it, only promises that, moreover, the signatory states are required to implement gradually, beginning only in 2020. His idea was a tax or price or fee of $15 a tonne of CO₂ to be paid by major emitters. He argued that only this measure could force down CO₂ emissions quickly enough. But he found no support, not even among big environment groups, because, as he said, nobody wants to scare people off by talking of new taxes.¹

I could have supported the tax proposal of Hansen if he had stopped there. But, like the others mentioned above, he too believes that ultimately it is only by replacing fossil fuel energies with clean energies that we can avert climate catastrophes. For he says in the same interview: "We need to have a rising fee on carbon in order to move to clean energy."¹

Unlike Hansen, I see the fraud taking place since long, and it is contained in the very conceptions of the proposed solutions – in all parts thereof and both in their short as well as long-term versions. Firstly, the whole COP process from the very beginning, i.e. since 1992 onwards, is swearing to promote sustainable development and eradicate poverty while at the same time protecting the environment and averting global warming. The COP21 did the same. Otherwise the developing countries would not have taken part in the process. But how do you, in the short term, eradicate poverty in developing countries, e.g. in India, South Africa or Colombia, if you make power much dearer by (a) imposing a tax of $15 a tonne of CO₂ payable by major emitters (that includes India), (b) by ending all subsidies to fossil fuels, and (c) paying huge subsidies to renewable energies (where will the huge sums come from)?

Most persons, groups, parties etc. mentioned above simply assume that economic growth i.e. growth in prosperity can and will continue without any problem when the fossil fuel energies have been replaced with "clean" energies. As against that, I (and my political friends, e.g. Ted Trainer) believe since long that it is absolutely necessary that the major industrial countries, including China, India, Brazil etc. purposely bring about a contraction of their economies – in order not only to stop burning more and more fossil fuels but also to reduce the general level of environmental pollution. We do not think that economic growth would be possible if we really want to save the biosphere. 

I can also cite evidence supporting this belief: In recent history, the only time CO₂ emission and general environmental pollution went down in a large region were the 1990s, i.e. after the Eastern European economies, especially the then second biggest economy of the world, that of the Soviet Union, collapsed. But in the Paris accord there is no mention of this necessity. The whole de-growth movement has been totally ignored, also by the big environmental NGOs. They simply believe in miracles.

One may ask why I doubt that it would be possible, if not soon, then at least in the near future or in the long term to fully or at least largely replace fossil fuel energies (and other nonrenewable resources) with renewable ones. After all, technological progress is taking place all the time! Basing myself on Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's differentiation between feasible and viable,⁷ I have been expressing this doubt for the last 25 years. It is not possible to repeat all my arguments here; interested people may read some of my writings recommended below.⁸ Here I only want to refer to two sets of facts that serve as indications that my doubt may be justified.

(1) Already in 1994, Eurosolar and its friends and associate organizations claimed in a full-page advertisement in the German print media that solar energy based on the technology developed till then could compete with fossil fuel energies. But today, after twenty more years of research and development, we see that solar energy is still neither competitive nor viable without large subsidies. That is why even today new coal-fired power plants are being built? 

(2) India is very rich in sunshine and wind. Still its government wants to double coal production in order to supply energy to the masses. Why? And why do its politicians say, it is only coal that India has for energy? Are the Indian engineers stupid or ignorant? Or have they all sold away their conscience to the coal lobby?

Protagonists of green growth, i.e. growth based on 100% transition to renewables are all very intelligent people. Yet they are ignoring these facts and questions. If they are not intentionally bluffing, then they are, I believe, suffering from an illusion. There are some more reasons why I criticize the big environmental NGOs. (1) They – unlike Hansen, who has called the whole agreement a fraud – have exonerated the political class (the authors of the Paris Deal) from all guilt, as if they are not always ready to fulfill the wishes of big corporations, as if they are actually good people who, like the NGOs, care for the interests of the masses, the only "villains" being the fossil fuel industries. Opposing these villains are, in their view, the good "ordinary people", the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, as if they do not want to consume more and more energy and other products of fossil fuels. This is too naïve, if it is not a fraud too. (2) 

They have isolated the climate crisis from all other crises involved in mankind's present predicament, as if they are not interconnected. They simply ignore the totality of the crisis. (3) They do not seem to know that the $100 billion that the politicians of the rich countries have promised to pay to the victims of global warming will first have to be generated by producing more green house gases. (4) It appears, moreover, that they have not noticed that these are all only promises. Don't they know that governments, especially in times of economic crisis, never deliver what they promise? The UNHCR, for example, recently reduced the food ration to the Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan etc. because they haven't received all the money that was promised to them.

But the more basic problem I have with those who are euphoric about the Paris accord is that the signatory governments as well as the NGOs, green and left parties etc. do not even mention the real and deeper causes of the ecological, economic, political and social miseries of humankind, of which climate change and large-scale migration are just currently the most glaring manifestations. These real and deeper causes are the continuously growing demands, aspirations and ambitions of a continuously growing world population, while our resource base is continuously dwindling and the ability of nature to absorb man-made pollution is continuously diminishing – in short, the lunatic idea that in a finite world infinite growth is possible.

Is the System Question Irrelevant?

What I, moreover, found very strange is that, all along, all people involved in the COP process assumed that the envisioned drastic changes in such a vital factor as the energy supply base of the modern industrial economies could be undertaken without requiring any changes in the current political-economic system.

Of course, one could not expect from the politicians who signed the deal that they would include in it a clause stating that the system they have built up and which has made them rich and powerful also needs to be changed. But how come also the rest of the involved people did not have the slightest doubt that the huge problem can be solved within the framework of capitalism and free market economy? Outside this circle, however, in the context of the problems at hand, the system question had already been posed several hundred times, in speeches and writings, before the COP21 began. In TV news broadcasts, I have even a few times seen pictures of radical leftist protesters carrying banners and placards with the slogan "System change, not climate change".

Can't one expect of honest and thinking NGO and media people that they also at least consider the possibility that the technological breakthroughs – 100% renewable energy, CCS etc., on which they are placing all their hopes – do not occur or do not occur in time? If they do not occur, shouldn't one have a plan B for averting the catastrophes? In plain English, if humanity can no longer indulge in the growth compulsions inherent in capitalism with its principle of competition in a free market economy, shouldn't the state(s) step in and order a stop in further economic growth? Shouldn't the state(s) then tell the people that they have to accept a contracting economy and all the consequences thereof? Shouldn't the state(s), from then on, plan an orderly withdrawal from the present mad economic system?⁹

Unfortunately, many people who do raise the system question – there are even some prominent people among them – often do that half-heartedly. They often question "capitalism as we know it or as it is today" or "globalized neo-liberal capitalism", as if a better form of capitalism is conceivable, as if it could be made ecological, social or humane, and compatible with economic contraction. I do not think such half-hearted critiques are of any use. Such people do not realize that as long as the motive of profit maximization and the principles of private ownership of means of production, selfishness, and competition remain – and these are the most essential elements of capitalism –, there would always be a compulsion to grow, whatever that may cost human society and nature. That will bring to nought all efforts to overcome the climate crisis and many other crises.

Conclusion. Can Anything be Done Before an Eco-Socialist Revolution?

A friend said to me: look, Saral, I am convinced what you are saying is correct. But your eco-socialist revolution may never happen or it may come too late. Can't the powers that be do something short of your revolution, and soon? And can't ordinary people, who are afraid of too radical a change, urge them to do something in this emergency situation.

I think that is possible. But a fraud on the people is not what I can advocate. A fraud cannot help even if we, as Mckibben urges us to do, "yell and scream at governments everywhere to get up off the couch."

I can today imagine that an honest, well-meaning (think of PODEMOS and SYRIZA), and eco-sensitive social democratic party in near future comes to power through an election and gives itself, against the background of humanity's serious multifaceted crisis, an immediate program that could be implemented within the framework of current kinds of democracy and capitalism.

The top priority of such a program should be to tell the voters the truth about limits to growth (and prosperity) and the necessity of respecting them, and then to take all feasible measures to gradually curtail economic growth, if not immediately and totally stop it. That should not be impossible. In fact, in Japan and the EU (with the exception of Germany), the economies are already stagnating – in Japan for the last 15 or 25 years and in the EU since 2008. Already now, people in the rich countries are getting used to stagnating economies or (as in China) falling growth rates. In Greece, Portugal and Spain people have experienced falling wages and cuts in salaries, pensions, and social benefits. 

We only have to make a virtue of this unwelcome development by openly and courageously saying that a recession is good for the environment including the climate. The government must only equitably distribute the burdens of protecting the environment in this way, and the burdens of the resulting unemployment by reducing by law the average weekly working hours.

In the broad environmental movements in the Western capitalist countries, we can find many concrete proposals and concrete examples for this policy: Governments can promote public transportation and discourage private motorization. Activists can start a system of borrowable cars and two-wheelers owned by groups. Governments can pass orders to the effect that individual private cars can be used only on alternate days etc. etc. Above all, governments must stop all previous policies of promoting growth. All such things work against the capitalist ideal of growth and lead us toward collectivism. In the past, capitalists have had to swallow them.

As far as I can observe, in the developed countries, among the masses, understanding for such policies is growing, although it is still far from becoming the majority view. Particularly political parties that want to get elected to parliaments are still not ready to adopt such a program. The Green Party of Germany has of course, long ago, betrayed its original program. But the latter was really an ecological social-democratic one.¹⁰ Here lies the great task of extra-parliamentary environmentalists and eco-socialist groups and individuals: to mobilize mass support for such a program. Today, the chances that they would succeed are much greater than in the early 1980s.

In the underdeveloped countries, the two most important parts of such an immediate program should be to stop population growth and build up a modest social security and job guarantee system.¹¹ Fortunately, both ideas are well accepted among the elites of many of such countries, although implementation is weak. To drive the illusions of catching-up economic development and growing prosperity out of their heads would become much easier once the elites of the developed countries have done their part of the work.

Saral Sarkar is an ecosocialist writer who blogs here

References

1. The first was communicated to me by my friend Kamran Nayeri. For the second seeHansen, James (2015): http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud

2. Friedman, Thomas L. (2015): http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/opinion/paris-climate-accord-is-a-big-big-deal.html?_r=02

3. McKibben, Bill (2015) http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/13/paris-climate-talks-15c-marathon-negotiating-physics

4. Javadekar http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2015/11/21/prakash-javadekar-intervi_n_8617864.html

5. Bigalke, Silke (2015) "An der Eiskante" . In Süddeutache Zeitung, 28.12. 2015

6. Mckibben, Bill (2015) http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/13/paris-climate-talks-15c-marathon-negotiating-physics

7. Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas (1978) "Technology Assessment: The Case of the Direct Use of Solar Energy", in Atlantic Economic Journal, December.

8. My detailed arguments on this issue are contained in
chapter 4 of my book Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? (see 9),
in http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/2014/04/krugmans-illusion-we-becoming-richer.html
and in http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/2015/09/root-causes-of-cleavages-in-ecological.html

9. I have thoroughly discussed these questions in my book Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? – A Critical Analysis of Humanity's fundamental Choices. (1999. Zed Books, London).
In German translation: Die Nachhaltige Gesellschaft – Eine kritische Analyse der Systemalternativen. (2001. Rotpunkt Verlag, Zürich)

10. See: Saral Sarkar (1994) Green-Alternative Politics in West Germany – Vol.II: The Greens. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.

11. For details of my argumentation see http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/2012/08/polemics-is-useless-proposal-for-eco.html