>
> Gar,
> You take up two different subjects in your article.
> The bulk of your article is criticism of the efficacy and feasibility of
> carbon pricing vis a vis global warming. That part of your article I
> basically agree with.
> But you are on dangerous ground, that is to say wrong, in your
> first paragraph when you support economic growth on a grand scale, which in
> your scenario would result from a massive spending on clean energy. You
> also extol that massive spending as the best policy, but it isn't clear
> whether that is for building a grassroots movement or controling greenhouse
> gas emissions or both. If you are saying that is the best policy for
> controlling greenhouse gas emissions, that is clearly wrong IMO.
>
> Your opening paragraph supports "Business as Usual with clean
> energy." That is basically a technology fix for a social and economic
> problem and it is the wrong way to go. This is the mistaken line taken by
> Fred Krupp of Environental Defense Fund on new clean technology: "This
> revolution will depend on industrial technology -- capital-intensive,
> shovel-in-the-ground industries -- and will almost certainly create the
> great fortunes of the twenty-first century." (Page 3 of Earth: The sequel).
> Related to the problem of a massive US spending "...hundreds of
> billions in annual green public investment... " is the question of
> separately funding similar massive spending in the South. Is the US public
> going to embrace that?
> Certainly technology has a role to play in dealing with GHG
> emissions but giving it the lead role is a mistake.
>
> Putting it first is not giving it the lead. I'm responding to a particular
mistake so focus on that mistake. However, no I do NOT believe that we can
just plug green energy into the system as it exist. The funny thing is that it actually would be TECHNICALLY possible to do that. The commercial wind and solar potential alone is a huge multiple of energy we get from fossil fuels worldwide. But on the one hand huge interests resist this - not only fossil fuel, but industries that do business based on massive flows of fossil fuel. For example the auto industry does not want to have to switch to making electric cars or worse be mostly displace by trains and increased density. The trucking industry does not not want to see more goods moved by train, and the train industry likes collecting monopoly rents from low value high weight items like coal and farm goods rather than becoming service oriented enough to be trusted with computers and refrigerators on a large scale. And I made a post in response to Tom that show how massive resistance to efficiency improvements will be even greater. So the technological changes we need won't come except in the context of social change - specifically social change that increase the power of the working class, of women, that reduces racism and so on. And of course, that particular type of social change would influence the type of technology adapted among the possible sustainable choices.
However one point about a switch to green techology. So much infrastructure needs to be built (milllions of wind turbines, millions of solar farms, massive rail construction, changes in how new buildings are constructed, massive retrofitting of existing buildings. Massive retrofitting of factories. And that is not a comprehensive list! So yes the kind of transformation we need will cause GDP to grow, even compared to what it would do otherwise.
Also, I don't remember if this is in response to Tom or you, but yes I agree that spending by the rich nations to help the poor ones will have to be comparable to the public investment in their own societies.
> Carrol provided a snippet from Gregory Albo:
> > A snippet: "The turn of green movements toward localist and market-based
> > strategies led to a remarkable - and unexpected - convergence with
> > neoliberalism, via promoting changing individual behaviour in response to
> > prices, and/ or a self-regarding communal localism. This has locked the
> > approach to climate change, in the most prominent example, almost
> entirely
> > along the axis of 'pricing carbon' and incentives to shift technology
> from
> > fossil fuel to renewable energy sources. The critical question of
> expanding
> > noncommodified social relations as an ecological strategy through reduced
> > work time, extending free public transit, continual learning through free
> > education and so forth, was left out of the programmatic proposals and
> > struggles over climate change. Such strategies do not just appear. They
> need
> > to be built strategically through finding points of convergence between
> > anti-austerity and climate change struggles."
>
> and then Carrol added his own interpretation:
> > Put otherwise: Normal political procedures will never lead to any control
> > over global warming. Whatever control is achieved must be _forced_ on a
> > reluctant state as the price of domestic tranquility.
>
> But you didn't respond to Albo's remark about noncommodified social
> relations.
> If you are not depending on a technological fix and ignoring
> noncommodified social relations all is well. But I don't see that in the
> piece you posted yesterday.
>
I think the point about how managers pass up profitable investments in energy saving to make less profitable investments in labor saving pointed at that. And I specifically said it would come only with struggle. But the things is of all the neliberal ideas gain currency, the idea of carbon price as a prime driver of change is an immediate threat that needs to be dealt with - because it has gained tremendous credence among many radical activists even at the grassroots. So this article focused on one threat rather than on every threat. And I honestly think that understanding the need for public investment is really good path towards understanding the rest.
Carrol often talks about talking to people who already agree with us. But one of the things we face are people who agree with us in a larger sense, and who are engaged in grassroots struggle on these issues who have bough a neoliberal line on many things because it is the "common sense" of the time and they simply have not been exposed to anything else.
And I think talking about public investment is a way out this mindtrap for them because they already understand that there is a class struggle, but just still have absorbed market worship. And so showing one "non-market" aspect - public investment, makes it easier to move on to other things like a shorter work week. Because a lot of the arguments for a shorter work week are similar to those for large scale public investment. But for someone who is already sympathetic and active but still in the mindtrap, the argument seems a lot less paradoxical and easier to follow when we talk about public investment than a shorter work week. And once they follow that logic with public investment then it becomes easier for them to understand how a shorter work week does not threaten the real economy, as opposed to capitalists or certain abstractions, and in fact improves it. It is not a coincidence that a real trend towards a shorter work weeks was reverse at the same time as a reduction in public investment and decrease regulation. The three go together as expressions of worker power under capitalism. BTW, this is not a rhetorical move. Talking about public investment, government spending, has helped me communicate with real life comrades in real
struggles. It really does help someone who is ready to open the door and move away from a certain neoliberal type of ideology for someone who is ready to do so. And in my experience it is one of the easiest doors to pass through for someone who is ready to make that move - easier to understand than many other things. I'm not saying it will convince someone on the other side. But it is geneuinely useful for someone who has decided they are not on the side of the people in charge, who think there are more answers on the left than on the right and who is trying to figure out what that means.
>
> Gene
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>
-- Facebook: Gar Lipow Twitter: GarLipow Solving the Climate Crisis web page: SolvingTheClimateCrisis.com Grist Blog: http://grist.org/author/gar-lipow/ Online technical reference: http://www.nohairshirts.com