( Five minute read)
Like me today, many of us are being constantly bombarded by facts, figures and narratives that tell us our days on earth are numbered, that it’s our fault and that it’s also largely out of our control.
Our problem is that capitalism is designed to squeeze every last cent out of this planet until there is nothing left. We can either fool ourselves about that until it kills us, or we can change it.
Like many horror stories, this one features a main character full of futile determination to maintain a sense of normalcy even as the ominous signs of doom become ever more impossible to ignore.
We can chuckle knowing that the monster is going to come for our designated protectors.
We stop chuckling knowing that it’s coming for all of us next.
Homo sapiens rose above the lesser animals thanks to our ability to wield logic and reason, yet we have somehow gotten ourselves to a place where the knowledge of what is driving all these wildfires and floods is not enough to enable us to do anything meaningful to stop it.
As overwhelming and omnipresent as the climate crisis is, it is not the core issue.
The core issue is capitalism.
Capitalism’s unfettered pursuit of economic growth is what caused climate change, and capitalism’s inability to reckon with externalities – the economic term for a cost that falls onto third parties – is what is preventing us from solving climate change.
It is easy to imagine that a real live existential threat to our way of life would prompt any society to assume war footing and marshal everything it has to fight for survival. Unfortunately, this response only takes hold in actual war situations, where the threat is “other people that we can shoot and kill in glorious fashion”.
When the threat comes not from enemy people, but from our own nature, we find it much harder to rise to the occasion.
Where is the glory in recognizing the folly of our own greed and profligacy? Leaders are not elected on such things. We want leaders who will give us more, leading us ever onwards, upwards and into the grave.
The G20 is a perfect model of our collective failure to build institutions capable of coping with deep, long-term, existential problems that cannot be solved by building more weapons.
On the one hand, the head of the United Nations says that there is no way for the world to meet its 1.5C warming goal without the leadership of the G20 that claims to be bailing out humanity’s sinking ship with one hand while contributing billons of tons of carbon to the atmosphere by subsidising in the past five years $3.3tn to fossil fuel production and consumption.
—————–
It is not good to be too pessimistic on climate change, because we must maintain the belief that we can win this battle if we are to have any hope at all. That said, it sure does seem like we’re screwed.
We’re being led to believe that the society we’ve built has to ‘collapse’ if we’re to save the world.
We’re presented with a binary choice — save the planet and live a miserable existence, or accept that some populations (plant, animal, human) will have to act as collateral damage to ensure a quality of life that vaguely resembles our current one.
This whole thing of it being ‘a trade-off’ or ‘tough choices’ is based on our current lifestyle being awesome and the future being a kind of worthy ascetic hardship.
The message is that all the things you rely on to keep us safe are no longer part of a viable future fit for everyone. The sense is that when these things disappear, life will be unbearable. That we’re going to turn on each other
.It’s almost like our lives are being engineered this way.
Cuts to benefits, dismantling of free healthcare, with Government openly allowing the majority of wealth to be passed on to those who are already most wealthy.
—————-
We haven’t got a hope of addressing complex problems or creating a future fit for everyone.
Given the challenge we’re facing — one that’s complex, systemic and long-term, if we carry on acting from this place we’re going to really screw it up.
Climate change and the destruction of our ecosystems seem to be the result of persistent, rampant over-consumption. This is because our modern society is a consumer society.
It’s based on one simple idea: that consuming will meet your needs.
Others things we think are harmless serve to numb us: Netflix boxsets, smartphones, profit seeking algorithms, masquerade as the answer, but they are really just part of the same system — insurance policies, private healthcare and the multi-billion dollar ‘wellness’ industry.
New industries pop up to give us what we want without the guilt — sustainably sourced, vegan, fair-trade — but even aside from the minefield that is working out whether it’s really ‘sustainable’, it’s still built on the same system. A system built on a disconnection from your needs, that can never leave you satisfied with who you are and the world around you.
None of these things can or will ever meet our unmet needs for love, connection or trust in the world, so we continue consuming, throwing more things into the bottomless pit inside.
We seem to be more unhappy than ever before. More physically and mentally ill. More divided than ever. More stressed about our impact on the world.
Social media is a form of disconnection from ourselves that leads to the disconnection from each other that in turn leads to disconnection from our environment — which is the only thing that has enabled us to create the extractive, destructive system we have in place.
Given all this, ‘conscious consumerism’ and ‘green new deals’ will never offer the solution we need, if they are built on the fundamental idea of citizen is as consumer, working to earn, earning to spend, spending to consume etc.
I think the fundamental answer lies instead in rebuilding our lives around connection.
Recognise that if you would love other people to live in a certain way or see the world from a different perspective, this is only going to happen if others sense you’re not judging them to be wrong.
People are slowly but steadily finding that their real needs are met more consistently in self-awareness and relationship than they are in quick fix consumption.
We can’t all join a five-day protest and we’re not all ready to sit in a circle and talk about our feelings but that’s not what’s being asked of us.
Indeed, climate change itself is the ultimate negative externality: fossil-fuel companies and assorted polluting corporations and their investors get all the benefits, and the rest of the world pays the price.
Now the entire globe finds itself trapped in the gruesome logic of capitalism, where it is perfectly rational for the rich to continue doing something that is destroying the earth, as long as the profits they reap will allow them to insulate themselves from the consequences.
The path we are on, still, is not one that leads to a happy ending.
Rather, it is one that leads to the last billionaire standing on dry land blasting off in his private rocket as the rest of us drown in rising seas.
We talk about tipping points when it comes to the climate, but the real tipping point has long passed.
Its called inequality.
A strict definition of capitalism is a society where capital is privately owned, and workers are paid wages by private firms. Essentially it is a society with minimal government intervention and resources are distributed according to the outcome of free markets.
A looser definition of capitalism is a situation where business is left to the free market, but the government intervene in many areas of the economy like business regulation, health care and education.
In practice, using this definition of capitalism – most modern economies are essentially capitalist because it is the free market that dominates in the production and distribution of scarce resources.
Therefore, you can say the potential of reward makes inequality an essential ingredient of capitalism.
Therefore, capitalists with access to private property can ‘exploit’ their monopoly power to make a much higher profit than other people in society. Therefore those who inherit capital can enjoy high income even without any effort.
To redress some of the inequalities of capitalist society.
Regulate monopoly power, provide free education, so everyone has access to education and equality of opportunity.
- Capitalism is unconcerned about equity. It is argued that inequality is essential to encourage innovation and economic development.
- Socialism is concerned with redistributing resources from the rich to the poor. This is to ensure everyone has both equal opportunities and in some forms of socialism – equal outcomes.
Aspects of Democratic socialism
- Advocates nationalisation of key industries (often the natural monopolies, like electricity, water)
- Prices set by the market mechanism, except public goods, such as health and education.
- Provision of a welfare state to provide income redistribution
- Support for trade unions in wage bargaining
- Use of minimum wages and universal income to raise low-income wages
- Progressive tax and provision of public services. For example, marginal income tax rates of 70%. Tax on wealth.
There is no reason that Democratic socialism can not operate in a Capital society that is disappearing into the world of Profit seeking algorithms.
For anyone still unsure that big, important things are now broken, several new titles paint a convincing portrait of grossly unsustainable inequality, corrupt political processes, and a looming crisis—much of it stemming from a financial system that for 40 years or so has prioritized short-term profit over all else and systematically removed any checks on its own worst impulses in pursuit of that goal.
The single most important step is re-empowering governments, to start putting out the inferno.
All Human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Contact: bobdilllon33@gmail.com
bobdillon33blog 