The Energy Sustainability Dilemma

A fascinating talk by J. David Hughes, a research fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, given at Cornell-5-2-12, "Energy Sustainability Dilemma : Powering the Future in a Finite World". Most of the easy energy is gone. This was from oil which was plentiful, and easy to get, with a very high net Energy Return on Investment (EROI). Now we are pursuing Deep Ocean Drilling, Tar Sands, Fracked Shale Gas, etc.

Are we heading for a dead end? What about Wind and Solar? Can they make up the difference? This talk is somewhat technical, but essential if we are to understand our energy options as our society pushes for more energy.

The Labour Party is Losing Support to the Greens – A Campaign of Smears is a Pitiful Response

Take a look at this piece from Luke Akehurst on Labour List to see just how worried Labour is by the Green surge in opinion polls and our party membership that has emerged recently. Every possible smear, real and imagined, is marshalled here in an attempt to dissuade former Labour (and Lib Dem) voters from supporting a party which offers policies that these people actually find attractive.  

Labour do have form on this of course. They put a great deal of effort into defending Bethnal Green constituency in London in 2005, ultimately unsuccessfully, as George Galloway took the seat for RESPECT. Labour regained the seat in 2010 when Galloway didn’t stand, again with a massive effort on the ground from Labour supporters. And Brighton and Hove, where Caroline Lucas won the seat for the Greens in 2010 is now close to the top of Labour’s target constituencies at next year’s general election, when you might have thought they would be concentrating on fighting the Tories?

But no, this is Labour who take any threat from its left much more seriously than the challenge from the Tories. The tactics are all too familiar as well. I remember in the early 1990s musing to a friend of mine who was a Labour party member, that I might vote Green (this after the Greens got 15% in the 1989 European Elections). She was quickly on the attack, telling me that the Greens had a fascistic policy on population control. That was enough to bring me back into the Labour fold.

When I eventually joined the Green Party (in 2006), the first policy I checked out was indeed population. I don’t know if the policy changed in the interim, but I was relieved to find that the policy is quite sensible now despite what Labour people were still telling me in 2006. I have since discovered that there is a tiny grouping in the Green party which still ‘bangs on population’, but they are truly a tiny minority in the party.

Anyway, back to the piece on the Labour List. The writer just doesn’t get it. The reason Labour are losing support to the Greens is because the Greens have proper left wing policies and if Labour were to adopt these, the left leaning voters would not be veering away from Labour in the direction of the Greens.

I was heartened to read the comments section of this post though, where this point is made by many of the contributors. Slagging off the Greens will not help Labour and may even make matters worse. Labour abandoned the progressive left of British politics a long time ago, and just as we saw in Labour’s Scottish heartlands in the indy referendum, these voters now go elsewhere, SNP and Green in Scotland, and increasingly PC in Wales and Green in England.  

Bring it on, let the truth shine through.

Book Review - SOS Alternatives to Capitalism by Richard Swift

SOS Alternatives to Capitalism provides us with a densely-argued and exhaustive review of global practices which might, conceivably, add up to his basic goal of disengagement from a system which, like the titan Kronos in Greek mythology, must devour its own children, with its growth obsession that extinguishes bio-, cultural and human diversity alike.

If the title of the book is excitingly misleading, since it suggests a multiplicity of alternatives to capitalism when most of us would settle for only one, Richard Swift’s advocacy of a ‘democratic ecosocialism’ as an alternative to capitalism is sustained and persuasive. From the earliest formulations of red-green politics, distributive justice was a basic principle: if the assault on the earth is to be contained, sufficiency for all is the first imperative. Swift is particularly powerful when he moves effortlessly across the globe, highlighting inventive local initiatives; what he has in mind is truly international in scope and suggests the power to unite rich and poor countries in a common project. His insistence on those groups of (mainly) indigenous peoples who protect the ‘global commons’ is a potent starting-point for any alternative which protects simultaneously both planetary integrity and distributive justice. His historical overview of the variants of socialism and their shortcomings, although brief, is incisive and to the point.

The ideas he propounds have existed, in one form or another for a long time; and these sometimes echo the prescience of the Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich, whose understanding of the meaning of ‘conviviality’, and whose denunciation of a ‘development’ that had declared war on subsistence, might have formed just such a theoretical basis for that other – and better – world, known to exist, but tantalisingly out of reach, by virtue of the absence of any known conveyance to take us there.

Richard Swift strikes a fine balance between denunciation of an ecocidal commitment to economic growth that is overwhelming the planet, and an elaboration of the thousands of candles of hope that lighten the gloom. His book is full of brilliant ideas – ‘escaping the tyranny of the economy’, ‘surviving progress’, ‘transcending a destabilizing market rationality.’ He also wryly observes that those on the Left who scorn ‘Utopian visions’ should bear in mind the extreme Utopianism of a Right, animated by an impossible Utopia – the dream of perfect equilibrium and harmony that would exist, if only truly ‘free’ markets could be established.

It is sobering to reflect how swiftly what looked like the monolith of state socialism crumbled; and the velocity with which capitalism flooded the vacuum, drowning alternatives, efforts at renewal and practices that were already thriving within the interstices of a failing system. This demonstrated the sheer material power of the dominant world ideology. It has hard to be believe that it is mere chance – and not some providential visitation – that an industrial culture born in one part of the world, should have so successfully colonised virtually all other societies and civilisations which, however resilient, have gone down before the economic ‘rationality’ of the West; and this is why Swift places the recuperation of the global commons at the heart of his project of reclamation of the politics of hope.

It is exhilarating to read of the multiple possibilities that already exist and can serve as an energizing inspiration to action. But the great mobilizing myth that will move the peoples of the world to make the great wager that it is worth risking everything for the sake of something better, remains elusive. We are all familiar with the stories that have been effective in gaining widespread popular adherence – the capitalist tale that everyone can be rich; Marx’s story that History was on the side of the workers; even the religious tale that this world is a vale of tears and we must await our reward in the next one. The formulation of ecosocialism – that we court catastrophe unless we limit our predations on the planet – is too negative, and requires a positive, emancipatory slogan. Richard Swift’s book, eloquent and inspirational, is certainly a movement in that direction.

Written by Jeremy Seabrook and first published at Red Pepper

Johnny Marr Live at Brixton Academy (23 October 2014)

I went see Johnny Marr open his rather short UK tour to publicise the release of his new album ‘Playland’ on Thursday night. I am a great fan of The Smith from the 1980s when their music painted perfectly the mood of the times in Manchester and much of the rest of the country, outside of the south east.

Johnny Marr (and other Smithees, Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce) went to the same school as me, they were a year below. You know, when you are in the 5^th year of secondary school, and there some of the fourth year that you deign to talk to? Well Johnny, Andy and Mike were those type of fourth formers.

I remember Johnny and Andy playing their acoustic guitars in the playground, ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was the favourite in those times.

Anyway, great concert it was, Noel Gallagher making a late guest appearance , and I’m really glad I got a ticket. Not all the audience were old rockers like me and my mates, the legend of The Smiths lives on, it is just a shame that Morrissey refuses to entertain any sort of reunion for the band. But we still have Johnny Marr.

The video/song above is ‘Lust for Life ’ from the other night, featuring Noel Gallagher as an encore, and below is 'There is a Light That Never Goes Out' and 'Panic'.

The Return of Occupy London

Occupy is back in London, UK, with a renewed focus on politics and an ambitious vision: to galvanise a mass movement for real democracy and establish a huge People’s Assembly to debate a list of specific demands for radical political reform.

This week, stalwarts of the Occupy Democracy campaign in Britain are continuing to stand their ground in Parliament Square. The heavy-handed police crackdown and evictions may have scuppered much of the plans for peaceful and creative demonstrations, but the re-emergence of the Occupy movement is a welcome sight in an increasingly unequal, stressed and disaffected city of London.

The goal of the new Occupy campaign is laudable and significant: to direct energy from current single issue struggles into “a critical mass that can radically challenge the corrupt unrepresentative [political] system”. Initially staged in solidarity with Hong Kong’s ongoing civil disobedience campaign, the aptly-named #TarpaulinRevolution aimed to galvanise a mass movement for real democracy by transforming the Square into a civic space where activists can re-envision and rethink the fundamentals of our society, not only through protest activity but also with a programme of talks, workshops, community assemblies, music and theatre.

The original call to action makes a compelling case as to why the British political system is unable to deal with the consequences of a social crisis it helped to create. Citing the entrenched problems of the UK’s growing ranks of homeless, hungry and unemployed, it calls on all movements that have opposed the government’s anti-democratic policies to come and join the occupation. “The problem is bigger than the Tories and their austerity program”, it states. “The problem is with our whole democratic system.”

Hence the need for a genuine democracy free from corporate influence is placed at the heart of the campaign, with an aspiration to establish a huge People’s Assembly that can debate a list of specific demands for radical political reform. As the call to action concludes: “It appears that the majority are not able to use the democratic process to improve, let alone protect, the basic necessities of life. And in turn, our increasing sense of powerlessness is mirrored by the increasing power of big business over our lives. It is time we took mass action to stop this.”

The occupation began on Friday 17th October with an overnight vigil to mark the UN Day for the Eradication of Poverty, followed by an introduction to Occupy Democracy and a series of short talks by a number of activists. A programme of activities still continues despite the presence of hundreds of police officers earlier in the week, and a 2 metre metal fence that has now been erected around much of Parliament Square Gardens. On Saturday and Sunday, when the ten-day campaign may still conclude if protesters can resist further arrests, talks and workshops have been planned on the theme of ‘Solutions – what would our ideal society look like?’, and ‘Means of change – a better world is nice in theory, but how do we make it happen?’

Moving beyond ‘anti’ to a common vision

One of the talks on Friday by John Hilary of War of Want particularly resonated with these themes, and emphasised the necessity for the emerging ‘movement of movements’ to move beyond reactive protest and articulate a collective vision of change. Drawing on the concluding section of his recent book, Hilary outlined what he terms three principles of convergence that indicate a means for moving beyond neoliberal capitalism and towards a better world: popular sovereignty, common ownership and social production.

Together, these principles reflect the growing spirit of inclusive activism that no longer focuses on a position of ‘anti’, and instead embraces the many alternatives and new visions that are out there today. This includes, in Hilary’s words, the many opportunities we are now seeing for “common ownership, sharing, and new understandings of the commons where we all participate, we all own it and we all control its future.”

A video of the talk can be viewed here, but it is also worth transcribing below Hilary’s discussion of these three principles and how we all need to ‘decommodify our worldview’ and look towards a future that is no longer dominated by the profit motive, which will mark the true liberation of peoples and societies.

“…The last thing I wanted to focus on was how we can learn from what people have achieved in other countries around the world in terms of fighting for a better future. Because I don’t know how you feel but for me it feels that we’re constantly fire-fighting, we’re constantly reacting and resisting to the things that they throw at us. If it’s not an austerity programme it’s a bank bailout; if it’s not a bank bailout then it’s another slashing of welfare benefits; it’s another swathe of unemployment coming in from the public sector. If it’s not that it’s a whole raft of other trade deals, it’s another set of austerity measures dropped down on us from the European Union.

What we’re saying is that we need a change, so it’s not just about us reacting all the time, but it’s about us putting in place new structures, new ideas and new policies, new thoughts that can challenge that for the future. And we’ve seen that not just in Spain with Podermos rising up, in Greece with Syriza, in all of the great, great election victories that you see in democracies across Western Europe where they are beginning to challenge from the left. But we’ve also seen that in Latin America where social movements have risen up and they have created political challenges to the elite – political challenges which have swept away the old elite, and created completely new dispensations for the future – new ambitions, and new aspirations to try and overcome their past, and to create democratic paths away from capitalism. And that sort of move is what we desperately need here. And you can put that around three basic principles, which when you read all of the different programmes of an alternative from across the world, it always seems to crystallise around three particular things. 

The first of these is popular sovereignty, and that means reclaiming democracy not just to the national level of governments, which was the thing when we were talking about this 15 years ago and everyone was saying ‘Globalisation is a great threat; we need to reclaim power for our national sovereignty’ – no, we need to take it much, much deeper and restore democracy at its roots; popular sovereignty. And you can look to the examples of those countries like Iceland or Tunisia or Equador or Bolivia, which have completely re-written constitutions in order to be able to give the people’s aspirations top billing. You can also see it in countries like Venezuala where they have local municipal committees, workplace committees, bringing people in to the democratic space and building from the grassroots. You can see it in the economic policies of restoring power to cooperatives and other collective engagements of people, so that they take control of the economic space as well as the political space. 

So that concept of popular sovereignty could not be more relevant here in Parliament Square, looking across at an institution which denies us that say, it denies us that participation. So I think the first thing we have to work out in our structures [is] how can we reclaim that space. Not just in demonstrations and actions, but much more [in terms of] going through all of the processes that we take part in; whether you’re members of trade unions, whether you’re members of local residents associations, whatever clubs or [forms of] participations you have, pushing that political message through. So, one: popular sovereignty. 

The second big, big issue here is common ownership. If you don’t own the means of production, if you don’t own the commons, if you don’t own and have rights over public services, you can never turn them back to your advantage. And we know that this is so important because the first wave of enclosures that the neoliberal programme brought in was a new wave of privatisation; privatising water, privatising education, privatising health, privatising anything they can get their hands on and not letting it go back into public hands in the future. And that again is another of the really important threats from these big trade deals. 

We know already that our government is selling us down the river when it comes to all those things. If we ever get another government in where we want to try and reclaim those powers, if they’ve already been put into a trade deal you can’t get them back. And we want them back, we’ve seen the type of opportunities for common ownership, sharing, and new understanding of the commons where we all participate, we all own it and we all control its future. You see that on the internet, you see that in car pools, you see that in the massive cooperative movement that lives around the world, you see that in workers collectives, the solidarity economy, the social economy, all of these different models which are still going towards the same basic aim of common ownership and control. 

So number one popular sovereignty, number two common ownership, and the final one is social production. Production not for profit, not so that value can be whisked away by the 1% and stored in their Swiss bank accounts, but production which is there for social need and not treating us as commodities in the system, not treating our public services as commodities, not treating the basic commons that we know and we use as commodities. And that decommodification process starts with each one of us. It starts with our rejection of the logic of capitalism. It says that we want a world that is not dominated by the profit motive. We want a world where we produce things for need, not for profit; for use value, not for exchange. 

And when we can start making that type of change, the liberation, the liberation that that brings to people, to societies, to women who have so often borne the brunt of this neoliberal attack, that liberation opens up all the possibilities that we want for a new and better future. We cannot achieve that without a political challenge to the elite. Turning people power into political power has got to be our first step. And that’s why I’m really thrilled to be here, to be part of this merging of the movement, this ‘movement of movements’ which comes together to challenge on all these different fronts.”

 
Adam Parsons is the editor at Share The World’s Resources. He can be contacted at adam(at)stwr.org.

Why the cuts aren’t working

The deficit is still rising. After four years of the most aggressive spending cuts in living memory, George Osborne is today borrowing 10% more than he did this time last year - £11.8bn in September alone. Total government debt is more than £100bn higher than in 2013, at £1.45tn. The failure to cut the deficit and shrink the debt is starkly apparent.

What truly beggars belief is that this has been achieved at the same time as economic growth has returned. On the IMF’s figures, the UK is set to be the fastest growing economy in the developed world over this year. Unemployment is falling. Jobs are being created at a record rate. And yet, somehow, the government is still forced to borrow increasing amounts.

The culprit is not hard to find. The amount collected in taxes has failed to grow with the economy. The graph below (taken from here) shows the course of receipts across different taxes since the crash of 2008.

Three things are immediately clear. First, without the ramping up of VAT in 2010, to 20%, Osborne would be in dire financial straits right now. Second, income tax has, despite apparently rising employment, failed to increase. Third, corporation tax, targeted for cuts, year after year, has slumped.

The tax system is increasingly leaning on regressive – biased in favour of the rich – consumption taxes, and failing to deliver fairer taxes on income. This is a result of both government policy, increasing VAT but cutting corporation tax, and the kind of “recovery” we have ended up with.

Consumption is rising. More is being spent in at least some shops. But real incomes for most people are still falling – Britain’s suffering the longest sustained decline in real incomes since the 1870s. Revenues from consumption taxes have therefore stayed solid. But revenues from income taxes – assisted by Osborne’s cutting of tax rates – have, by the same token, fallen.

This doesn’t quite make sense. If real incomes are still falling, despite rising employment, how can people be spending more? Partly this reflects a return to rising inequality: in the last year for which we have figures, the richest 10% saw a 3.2% increase in their earnings, whilst the other 90% saw a decline. If at least some people have more cash, they can spend more.

But it is also the result of borrowing. Borrowing by consumers has been rising since early 2013; in particular, unsecured borrowing – borrowing without any collateral, such as a house in a mortgage – has been shooting up. This includes credit card debt, and store credit, as well as (increasingly) payday loans. It is, in other words, more insecure lending.

The story since 2007 is quite clear. Right up to the crash, people were borrowing more every month. As the crash hit, and the recession broke out, they began repaying their debt. Indeed, one of the major drivers of the recession was this slide in spending by households, since if less is being spent, less must also be sold: and so the whole economy gets pulled backwards. (This is the multiplier effect in action.)

But with the return to consistent growth from early 2013, this pattern reversed. Households began borrowing again in earnest from around January that year. Currently, unsecured lending is increasing at a rate of close to £1bn a month, and has wobbled around slightly under that figure for the last year. That’s about the same rate as the monthly increase in consumer spending over the last 18 months.

This need not be a problem, if it weren’t for two factors. First, people are already substantially indebted. Since the crash they have, as we have seen, attempted to pay down their debts. But this has only removed some of the debt burden created prior to the crash. The total volume of unsecured lending stands today at £162bn, having fallen from a July 2008 peak of £200bn. That’s a decline, but the total amount outstanding has been increasing steadily for the last year.

Second, real incomes are still falling. And debts must be repaid, with interest. You can’t have consistently rising debts, and consistently falling incomes. The two must collide at some point. That means a crisis.

So here’s the lunacy of the situation revealed. Osborne is having to borrow increasing amounts because incomes – and therefore income taxes – have not kept pace with economic growth. Yet that economic growth is, itself, being pulled along by a return to borrowing by individuals. Debt, government and household, is rising.

There is nothing sustainable in this situation. The hope in the Treasury is that taxes from self-employment, deferred by richer taxpayers seeking to duck the old 50p highest rate, will pick up in the next tax year. (Of course, with average earnings from self-employment down 22% since 2008, this may be a forlorn hope.) But that will be a one-off kick. Without a return to sustained income growth, spread across the population, the books won’t balance. We are, on the current course, heading for another crash.

Written by James Meadway and first published at the New Economics Foundation site

Anti Immigration – The Cure to all our Problems?

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, has announced his intention to negotiate an ‘a cap on immigration’ on residents from the European Union (EU) coming to the UK, in a desperate attempt to spike the United Kingdom Independence Party’s (UKIP) popularly amongst a significant section of British voters. Whether it will be successful in stemming the UKIP surge is open to debate, as all other similar stunts, such as the offer of an in/out referendum on the EU, have so far failed to depress UKIP support.

Whether even it will be listened to seriously by other EU states is openly questioned by Jose Manuel Barraso, outgoing European Commission President, today. It is highly unlikely that Cameron will get any kind of cap, so this is purely a public relations exercise, as no doubt UKIP will point out. I think this is just another sign of the established political parties pushing the old buttons that have been effective before, but they are just not working anymore.

For many UKIP supporters, as I have pointed out before, it is not really UKIPs policies that are attractive to them, indeed many supporters don’t even know what they are, but it is rather an expression of dissatisfaction with the whole of the existing political establishment (the Greens are profiting from this too, with completely opposite policies to UKIP, in the main). So, I doubt this will have the effect Cameron desires.

I think it is true to say that in some parts of the country immigration from eastern Europe in particular, is unpopular, but in other parts, London for example thrives on immigration, it passes off almost unnoticed. London is of course an ‘immigrant city’ where the majority of the population is of non British stock, and even that which is, tends to be from other parts of the UK.

But the big problem with immigration though, is not the immigrants themselves, as the British are by and large a very tolerant bunch, but it is the lack of resources being put into the infrastructure to cope with their needs and the rest of the population. This all started under the last Labour government, when Labour were quite happy to take the increased growth in the UK economy generated by eastern European immigrants; many took the opportunity to have building extensions and improvements, and at comparatively inexpensive cost. No, the failure of the Labour government in this area, was to neglect to reinvest some of this growth in public services.

Particularly in poorer areas, the pressure for doctor’s and hospital appointments, school places and jobs became quite acute, and the Coalition, if anything, have made matters even worse with their crusade to slash public spending and to cut taxes for the wealthy. 

There does seem to be something of a difference this time around with anti immigrant sentiment, compared to the 1950s, 60s and 70s, where the immigrants to the UK were predominately from the Caribbean and India and Pakistan. This of course being colour.

Now, I come across black and Asian British people who complain about eastern (white) Europeans taking their jobs or under cutting their wage rates, but as always, it is a simplistic scapegoating reaction to a more complex problem.

That problem is with the affects of economic globalisation and an obsession with neo-liberal ideology. Is it any better that our jobs can be transferred out of the country altogether, by outsourcing to India or China? Is it immigration that has forced down wage rates, or government policy on reducing the powers of trade unions and opt outs and the watering down of EU employment rights? Did immigrants invent zero hour contracts?

The idea that by stopping or limiting immigration all our problems will be solved is naive. By demonising immigrants as ‘health’ or ‘welfare’ tourists which just isn’t borne out by the facts and places like Clacton, which has recently returned the first UKIP elected MP, has only 4.3% of its population born abroad. But Clacton, like many areas is economically depressed, as a direct result of government policies, both Labour and the Coalition.

Let’s put the blame for our economic problems firmly where they belong. The economically disastrous one party neo-liberal state that we live in is to blame, and UKIP will do nothing about that at all.