I very much agree with you that substituting green technology (for the most part wind energy, solar and efficiency) for fossil fuel use will boost conventional GDP, though it will improve peoples lives even more. But the one point I disagree with you on is that mixing green tech with fossil fuel use will increase conventional GDP even more. Of the things you articulated that is our only point of disagreement.
Before I get to that though, I should add that I don't think capitalism as it exists today can make the change we need. The solar and wind part might happen with moderate pressure, though a lot more than today. But the efficiency piece is another matter that will take major struggle. This next bit will be long, but I think worth it, because it is one of those moment where capitalism shows itself a bit more nakedly than usual.
Much waste, not only of energy but of water and other resources (not to mention human life) is a side effect of how work is organized in today's capitalism. Things are arranged so that the few can control the many and that often results in very wasteful arrangements - even from a short term capitalist perspective. One of the points I made is that managers in evaluating investments will save labor before they choose to save energy (and other types of resource) That means that managers routinely pick LESS profitable ways to save labor at the expense of MORE profitable ways to save energy and other resource flows. Management is maintaining and increasing class power for owners (and for themselves to the extent that some top managers are part of a middle class in the Marxian sense) . Now formally this is not portrayed that way. Rather things like energy savings are seen as not being part of "core business" and thus requiring higher
hurdles - or evaluated with heuristics rather than rigorous analysis which amounts in practice to higher hurdles.
But I think at least some managers know exactly what is going on. . Many firms hire consultants who specialize in reducing energy waste. Well if you want to reduce energy waste, any decent specialist knows you talk to worker on the floor who know the specifics of how processes work in practice in a way that the managers and engineers don't. And they immediately get pushback: "what the hell are you doing? We did not hire you so that the monkeys could run the zoo!"
So you are not going to get energy efficiency under shortsighted neoliberal capitalism. That piece can only occur in some system where workers have much more say than they do now - which will happen only as a result of struggle. I'm not going to prejudge that struggle and say the outcome would have to socialism, though that would be my preference. It could well be that it ends up with some sort of social democracy (defined as a form of capitalism in which workers have a fairly significant say based on some actual form of power such as a strong union movement.) So for sure you won't get the efficiency piece of the puzzle without struggle. And I'm pretty sure you won't get the solar and wind pieces either (except as supplements to fossil fuels) cause this particular form of capitalism seems pretty damn shortsighted - decadent as Doug says.
OK now to my disagreement with you. I don't think a capitalism that mixes green tech with heavy fossil fuel use will have a higher GDP than a green social democracy or socialism that phases out fossil fuel use. (Not that maximum GDP is actually the goal of most capitalists. To the extent that it is useful to treat capitalism as having goals [maybe sometimes a useful heuristic] it is the primary goal for capitalism either. GDP is growth is required, maximum growth at the expense of other goals, no.)What is the difference? Air pollution and conventionally measured productivity! it has long been known that massively reducing indoor air pollution can increase productivity by from 2% to 4%. But more recent studies shows that this is even more true for outdoor airpollution. A society that eliminates fossil fuels will massively reduce and perhaps eliminate outdoor air pollution (assuming it uses solar and wind not freaking biofuels and biomass). A society that has reduced air pollution by 95% or better will have a 2% to 4% higher GDP (conventionally measured) than one that does not. And of course we count the suffering and death from air pollution, rather than focusing narrowly on GDP (Not to mention suffering and death from extraction and transport of fossil fuels) then improvement in human life is even higher. But I repeat, even conventional GDP is higher. Of course a fossil free world will also have cleaner water. That may impact conventional GDP as well.
I know it seems like a very simple thing. But the impact is huge.
On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 11:21 AM, Eugene Coyle <eugenecoyle at igc.org> wrote:
> 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.
>
> Meanwhile, over on LBO, 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 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.
>
> Gene
>
>