So What’s Changed?
by William Bowles
 It’s time for some plain speaking about the issue of climate change and capitalism and the progressive movement’s approach to the whole issue, at least in the so-called developed world. (Progressives in the developing world have more pressing needs right now which is why we have to get our act together.)
Okay, so a posse of ‘eminent’ scientists have finally given the official stamp of approval to climate change but it’s also obvious that the leading industrial nations are not prepared to bite the bullet and do what is necessary to halt the slide let alone reverse it.
Instead the advertising industry has gotten its ‘green’ act together, and with the able assistance of government, it’s mounting a massive propaganda campaign whose sole objective is to transfer the responsibility for climate change to the consumer.
The question socialists have to address is simple: What’s
changed? Pre-climate-change capitalism is identical in every respect to
today’s. All that has happened is that our past has finally caught up
with us, which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows the
slightest thing about the way capitalism works.
The fact that it
might be too late to halt the changes taking place to our climate
alters nothing when it comes to our approach except that is for the
increased urgency of the situation.
Historically the left has
viewed the ‘greens’ with suspicion and in some respects, for the right
reasons. Lacking a class perspective, the environmental movement (or
should it be movements?) has failed to identify the real causes of the
crisis we face. Worse still, having now found an ‘ally’ in government
and because it lacks a class perspective, it is now peddling the
government line, especially in passing the buck to the ‘consumer’.
Indeed,
it (the environmental movement) runs the risk of becoming totally
complicit in the process of passing the responsibility from those who
rule to working people. For the fact is that as with all crises that
confront us, the issue of climate change is inextricably bound up with
the way capitalism works, not merely because it is structurally
incapable of making the changes necessary but also because the vested
interests of the state and business are one, thus expecting them to
make the necessary changes voluntarily is a pipe dream. Having coopted
the environmental movement has given the state a thin, green veneer,
but rub it just a little bit and the real iron core is there for all to
see.
And perhaps even more important, at least in the current
circumstances, it is the way the ruling elite is exploiting the havoc
our political-economic system has wreaked on the planet and its
peoples. Important because the state is exploiting the fears, both real
and imaginary, that many people feel about the future (never mind the
awful present), and, it’s a fear that the state has been quick to
exploit, for example, using the euphemism of ‘energy security’.
For
it is clear that regardless, the majority of people in the developed
world know only too well that their relative wealth depends on the
(increasing) poverty of the great majority of the planet’s people. Thus
one aspect of the propaganda campaign is to link the fears of losing a
position of (relative) privilege by for example, linking the ‘war on
terror’ to ‘energy security’.
It should be apparent therefore,
that selecting ‘fanatical Muslims’ as the focus was not a random choice
given the fact that the bulk of the known oil deposits are under
countries which are Muslim.
For regardless of what the
propagandists say, oil is central to Western economies and has been for
at least a century. Oil, not only to power its insatiable appetite for
making products but also of course, to fuel the military power to take
what it doesn’t own.[1]
Meanwhile, the BBC is churning out
‘green’ programmes by the fistful featuring mostly well-heeled,
middle-class people living in large houses in country settings. The
‘less fortunate’ amongst us, get the ‘energy audit’ treatment or some
useless wind turbine bolted onto their roofs.
Having spent
decades inculcating a culture of consumption, the unfortunate populous
is now being taken on a guilt trip for doing just that—consuming in gay
abandon like there’s no tomorrow.
And of course, even the guilt
trip is sated by consuming ‘green’ products and services. ‘Saving the
environment’ has been commodified along with everything else.
For
regardless, the very nature of capitalism is one of barely controlled
chaos, forever hovering on the edge of crisis and very often tipping
over into meltdown, driven by its imperatives to expand (that is to
say, reproduce capital) without regard to the consequences, as the
occupation of Iraq exemplifies.
For socialists, the issue of the
destabilisation of the climate merely reinforces the view that
capitalism is bad for us, thus the objective must be to link the
arbitrary nature of capitalist production to its inability to produce a
solution, a solution that entails a complete reorganisation of the
economic basis of not just this society but the entire planet's.
The
issue is simple: is capitalism capable of doing this? Judging not only
by its response to the current situation but also its past record, the
answer is a resounding no.
Ultimately, the issue of global
warming is irrelevant to the crisis that confronts us for nothing has
changed. For capitalism, it’s business as usual, it’s only how the
products are sold to us that has changed. Thus the challenge of global
warming is transformed into a marketing device whether it’s for ‘green’
autos or whatever other product that can have a ‘green’ label tagged
onto it.
Unlike all the Armageddon movies that Hollywood churns
out, in which humanity pulls together to defeat the extra-terrestrial
threat, when confronted with a comparable scenario in the real world,
doing the right thing by humanity escapes these champions of
‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’.
I know this sounds naïve of me
and it probably is but convening a global conference of nations at
which the rich countries agree to put their vast resources at the
disposal of the people of the planet, would seem, given the gravity of
the situation, the obvious thing to do.
The fact that they don’t
do this, or something like it, is proof enough that they are incapable
of acting rationally let alone responsibly, which fact should send
shudders down the spine of every right thinking person that we have
these kind of people in power! Worse still, that we allow them to
continue destroy our once beautiful planet.
Collectively, the
planet has the resources to start changing the way we live, and by we I
mean those of us in the rich, privileged 10% of the world and in the
process assist those developing countries to implement sustainable
economic development programmes. Damn, it’s not rocket science.
I
can’t stress this point too much but it is imperative that people
recognise that our political and economic elites are pathologically
incapable of initiating the kinds of changes that need to be made,
either now or at any time in the past. They gotta go and only we can
get rid of them. And this goes for every existing political party, not
merely the ‘governments’.
If nothing else, climate change has
made most of us realise that we live on one, indivisible planet and
that the changes taking place are planet-wide, thus only a collective,
global response will suffice.
Note
1. See my review of
William Engdahl’s excellent ‘A Century of War – Anglo-American Oil
Politics and the New World Order’, Pluto Books, 2004.
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