<http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/12/greenwash-and-blackmail.html>
Here's an excerpt:
When I accuse yes campaigners of supporting what is a flat tax, the response is almost invariably to say that normal working class people can't afford cars, so this is really a progressive scheme to redistribute wealth from the motorised middle classes to the pedestrian proles. I am vaguely aware that somewhere in the provincial backwater that lies outside the M60, a congestion charge has already been in place for a few years, and I can sort of believe that the kind of logic being used here works in Central London. I can't really conceive of taking a car to the heart of the tube network without also being shortlisted to join the panel on Dragons' Den. But London this isn't. The area covered by the Manchester scheme would have been vastly more vast, and as one earnest environmentalist informed me, the poorest third of families therein don't have a car. Meaning that two-thirds of us do, and two thirds of us are not the middle classes . My mum, before she retired, worked as a nurse. She drove to work. When I spent a summer working at the box factory, it wasn't the bosses who filled the car park at the start of each shift.
For the issue isn't one of motorists' "rights", as the Jeremy Clarksons of the world would have it, but nor is it one of unsustainable privileges and lifestyle choices, as an obnoxious but vocal tendency within the Green movement seems to believe. Driving to work is a source of much pollution, yes, but it's also its own punishment. No-one comes out of the commute in a state of beatific relaxation, much less in hedonistic abandon. It's a source of great stress that most people would happily do without. The way in which capitalism runs our cities involves mass diurnal displacement on the part of the workers, and the way in which transport is organised on a private and mostly individual basis puts the burden of paying for this on the workers too. Piling a congestion charge on top of this only adds to that burden.
[...]
And because I believe in acknowledging list member insights, a tip of the hat to Jordan Hayes for discussing the NYC congestion pricing plan pretty much along these same well constructed lines when the topic came up some time ago.
Although specifically about the situation in Manchester, Dave S. neatly describes the environmental movement's general lack of understanding when it comes to capitalism. The preferred green critique is of 'un-sustainability', wasteful lifestyle 'choices' and our alleged break with 'Nature'. As I mentioned during the Farm War threads (search the archives for "Pollan"), this heavy moralist theme totally misses the point.
The point being that, as Dave S writes, "...it is the priorities of private capital that drives the commute". The world, as is, with the upward moving carbon count and other ongoing environmental problems, was in no small way shaped to suit the demands of capitalism. Of course, I'm not saying that in a world without capitalism hydrocarbons would've stayed in the ground and cars un-invented, these are useful and powerful things almost any civilization would eagerly adopt. I'm saying that the way these developments were deployed was determined by the needs of capitalist enterprises. Bruce Sterling, pushing back in his final Viridian Design post against the green neo-hairshirt trend, stated that 'sustainable' should mean well made, not a re-do of romanticized pre-industrial age techniques. If your cell phone was designed to last for 20 years (that is, if it was meant to be modular and upgradeable to an extent which is now considered absurd) that would be a very 'sustainable' design because it would keep a lot of phones out of landfills for a very long time.
"Last Viridian Note"
<http://www.viridiandesign.org/2008/11/last-viridian-note.html>
But landfills, as currently used, are a logical outcome of a design aesthetic built around the profit requirements of capitalism.
Not only does the green movement tend to underestimate, or entirely miss the role of capitalism, there's also a belief among many that a new, friendlier form is being created thanks to a revival of 'Small if Beautiful' thinking. Perhaps we could call this Small is Beautiful 2.0 (and it seems particularly appropriate since so many of the new green believers are also former 'the web is democratizing the world' types). For example, when I briefly corresponded with 'sustainable' design luminary John Thackara about this he assured me that a.) 'top down' -- e.g.' political -- solutions to climate change were off the table because of something called 'catabolic collapse' and b.) he and his colleagues were performing an end run around "dinosaur corporations" by crafting elegantly small, nimble enterprises.
Thackara and me:
<http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/10/city_eco_lab_th.php>
John Michael Greer's paper on "How Civilizations Fall"
<http://www.xs4all.nl/~wtv/powerdown/greer.htm>
[Greer's thesis is that civilizational complexity inevitably leads to collapse so the only 'sustainable' sort of society is heavily decentralized and very small scale. Thackara used this paper to support his belief that 'top down' projects such as smart grids and coordinated, subsidized solar power systems weren't going to happen since they increase civilizational complexity. This is an example of another weakness of green orthodoxy: someone writes an essay, book or position paper and its ideas are uncritically adopted as proven because they flatter the movement's already existing notions.]
When people describe the problem as being one of 'old' styles of business vs. 'new' there's a good chance they're not actually seeing the capitalism around them clearly (we could call this Naomi Klein-ism).
.d.