… persuade them to stop being rightwingers[1]
I have a piece in Inside Story arguing that the various efforts to “frame” the evidence on climate change, and the policy implications, in a way that will appeal to those on the political right are all doomed. Whether or not it was historically inevitable, anti-science denialism is now a core component of rightwing tribal identity in both Australia and the US. The only hope for sustained progress on climate policy is a combination of demography and defection that will create a pro-science majority.
With my characteristic optimism, I extract a bright side from all of this. This has three components
(a) The intellectual collapse of the right has already proved politically costly, and these costs will increase over time
(b) The cost of climate stabilization has turned out to be so low that even a delay of 5-10 years won’t render it unmanageable.
(c) The benefits in terms of the possibility of implementing progressive policies such as redistribution away from the 1 per cent will more than offset the extra costs of the delay in dealing with climate change.
I expect lots of commenters here will disagree with one or more of these, so feel free to have your say. Please avoid personal attacks (or me or each other), suggestions that only a stupid person would advance the position you want to criticise and so on.
fn1. Or, in the case of young people, not to start.
John Quiggin 
Will the right’s tribal rejection of science morph into pro-active accelerated destruction of the environment? Maurice Newman has kicked the ball off with “global cooling” although I don’t know whether he advocates an increase in carbon emissions to stave off this outcome.
In my interactions with young right-ish people, they all still seem to hold out a hope that Malcolm Turnbull will roll Abbott and the Tea Party liberals, and the Liberals will re-invent themselves as a not insane party.
I find this ridiculous and extremely hard to believe… but hey? Stranger things have happened?
A devoted American champion of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was (and I learned this fact only about a week ago) none other than the Michigan-based Russell Kirk, author of that 1950s bestseller The Conservative Mind, which had already gone through umpteen editions by the time its author died in 1994. Dr Kirk, whose friends happen to have included T.S. Eliot (about whom he wrote a book and numerous articles), defended Silent Spring on solid socially-traditionalist grounds.
Anti-science has still got a way to go. I expect much more will be done to doom the biosphere. Never underestimate the power of stupid.
The main problem as I see it (at least locally), is that a government that can’t see the writing on the wall for fossil fuels will not invest in alternatives. This means that when we and the rest of the world inevitably start seriously building renewables, it will be done on the top of American and European tech.
Australia needs to have something to sell. We can’t sell coal forever, and thanks to the right’s short sightedness, when it becomes worthless we won’t be getting any money off its replacement.
A good start might be to consider the points made by Dan Kahan in his project cultural cognition project. Fortutitously, he blogs about it. In a nutshell, you need to tap into the Right’s values.
I think the Right will come on board once the evidence of climate change smacks them in the face like a brick and this will be helped along by framing the issue in a way that appeals to right wing values, incuding an appeal to nuts and bolts rational self interest. After all, devastaing climate change is not going to be good for the bottom line for all but a few industries.
Also let’s be honest. At the moment the rate of climate change, if I understand the situation correctly, barely scrapes into the bottom of IPCC estimates and folk inside the mainstream of climate science are busily trying to explain what is happening.
From the Guardian:
It is hardly surprising that folk who are ideologically primed to disbelieve AGW is a major threat that requires state intervention are now pointing a finger and saying why should we believe this lot. If they want theoretical support for such skepticism, they can always cite Karl Popper on how the ad hoc adjustment of theory is a bit iffy.
Thus the cold hard brick of reality will probably require a string of record breaking hot years.
PrQ
I’d say that’s debatable. We really don’t know enough about feedbacks to be at all confident about that. If there is a serious pulse from the Arctic Permafrost that delay might be the equivalent of one of 20+ years. A lot of damage can occur while we wind that back.
Let’s keep in mind that for all practical purposes, carbon is either forever (see discussion of the “Long Tail of CO2 — about 7% of the perturbation caused by a CO2 molecule entering today will still be present in 50,000 years time) or until some fabulous and scaleable technology to draw it down and sequester it is developed.
As I said the other day, we need to achieve peak CO2 concentrations early and as low as possible and then move quickly back to a figure which can at worst stabilise temperatures, if not begin reversing them to return as quickly as possible to the global temperature we had about 120 years ago. If we can do that we will save more of the ice and snowpack and land based glaciers, and avoid much biodiversity loss.
And let us keep in mind ocean acidification as well.
As things stand, that sounds an idle fantasy, because we’d probably have to get concentrations well under 280ppm to do that.
A planet emergency will be reached when world population increases and pollution levels are such, that a depleted and damaged biosphere cannot meet the increasing demand for its resources. In the circumstances of wrong political assumptions, and the twin evils of human greed and continuing unfettered consumption, unrestrained capitalism will be found wanting. The right does well under the present economic arrangements, so ‘do not disturb’ the reactionaries. When it is beyond spaceship earth’s ability to heal itself, it will then be too late to construct an alternative to our present economic arrangement. I wish I could be as optimistic as John Quiggan.
To take another angle on (depressive) optimism – given the promise of massive profits that geoengineering holds out, we can probably expect a wholesale embrace of the science when it becomes clear that the situation is so dire that geoengineering is the only option. The American Enterprise Institute and other RW American think tanks have already given plenty of thought to this.
Heute Deutschland, morgen die Welt!
Just my elliptical way of expressing my bewilderment at JQ in Messianic world. Is He preaching (and prophesying) to the whole world or can he sometimes see things as a humble provincial reconciled to a group of acolytes larger only than Freud’s close circle of mutual backscratchers and to the unreality of Rudd like fantasies of changing the world to Australia’s advantage. (Clue: he doesn’t really want to or has given up hope – and will soon do a Jim Jone on us poor worshippers? – because he goes out of his way to insult “right wingers” even to the point of calling a distinguished public servant with a First in mathematical physics and Rhodes Scholarship a “bigoted old man” by necessary inference).
Still, all is forgiven on this happy morning when my pills have been delivered and administered. For innovators are about to save us and I rejoice at every foolish Queenslanders’ losses from not having privatised the electricity when the going was more than good 20+ years ago. I worship the sun which is already chipping away at the Qld gov’s coal fired profits (pity about the Grants Commission but we never were real believers in states competing American style despite the praises eloquently conferred on Playford by “the most intelligent socialist in Australia”: Hugh Stretton).
But back to my respectful mode for the Earth bound economist JQ. Have I missed it, or can we still hope for some justification for the view that early anti-AGW expenditure is good business even for Australia. Of course you would never have recommended state investment in the business of that clever Chinese-Australian solar energy scientist graduate of the UNSW who took his startup to China. Oh, the might-have-beens. He might have been a Prof in Australia chairing a small solar panel company selling the photovoltaics at 5 times current prices – and he mightn’t have gone broke….
One final protest on behalf of the 1 per cent against your vindictiveness. The fees they pay me for PR and other forms of protection make me quite objective about the poor suckers who earn perhaps 200K and actually pay net tax.
Is it fair to add to their burdens of higher health costs for nothing better than standard, a levy to deal with the budhet deficit, no first home owners grants, school fees well above the government’s contribution…? And to cap it all they may be workinf where they can see how the 0.01 per cent can pay almost as little tax as Mitt Romney and can readily enough find offshore relief as needed. Start thinking Hong Kong, Bahamas, Israel, Bermuda, Switzerland … and have I got some nice little packages for you! (Well that’s what the other Yuri said to me by Skype from ? the other day).
There’s another very special package which allows you to avoid the company of Gina Rinehart and James Packer. There’s an opt out too for Silvio Berlusconi as long as you don’t mind being filmed.
Oops! I wouldn’t want to reread it all however cogent but I see that I put “world” for “mode”. Kinda spooky when I went on to mention Freud…
I think there needs to be a reworking of the concept of ‘the right’. There are plenty of conservatives who are or have been pro the science. Margaret Thatcher, Paul Ehlrich come to mind as do some relatively right wing friends of mine.
Conversely there are plenty on the left who are at best luke warm – Martin Ferguson and indeed Penny Wong come to mind. The latter always struck me as bet hedging reflecting a perception that this was just another management problem rather than a full blow existential challenge and she was too compromised by her union connections to be a serious leader for environmental change.
Meanwhile the Greens, though pro addressing climate change have plenty of confused ideas and a lack of solutions in regards to the bigger sustainability picture which climate change prevention needs to incorporate – read their economic policies (or lack thereof) to appreciate their positions do not arise from science but from ideology. Separately there is a very strong antiscience streak among many new agers which is currently evident in other forms like the anti-vaccination campaign support.
I guess I’m agreeing with VS.
As a working approximation I’d suggest that JQ is really referring to neoliberal ideologues who equate rationality with rationalisation of viewpoints without considering their rationality and use a number of simple views of the world. The question is are there any among their number supporters who are more open minded and what would it take to change them.
Sadly Turnbull is the model which illustrates there isn’t much hope. Since their election he has in effect joined the extreme neoliberal ranks to such an extent he no longer is credible and for practical purposes he himself is now as much a climate change denier as Abbott himself. So perhaps a more useful question would be what will it take to start the ball rolling whereby those conservatives who once professed belief in climate change science based on their own analysis rather than just opportunism realize they can no longer be party to the horrors that now dominate the controlling clique of the right currently. Turnbull’s change or otherwise is almost certainly a touch stone. But I am not holding my breath he will break ranks before he retires.
@Fran Barlow
As you seem to know there is an issue about how long newly emitted CO2 molecules remain on average in the atmosphere you may be someone to calculate what growth of forests (as well as stopping deforestation) can do to mop up the excess. As you would know there are huge seasonal takeups of CO2. Interesting BTW that there was a lot less Amazon rain forest in 1520 than in 2000 (or now).
@yuri
Actually it’s less important which individual CO2 molecules remain in the atmosphere, as the net effect of the augmentation — the perturbation. All of our temporary carbon sinks — the water, the air, vegetation — continually absorb and return CO2 to the other temporary sinks. Adding more to the atmosphere simply means, all else being equal, molecules of CO2 that would have been taken up are returned to the atmosphere.
Silicate weathering is the only naturally occurring way to take CO2 out of the flux but it’s much too slow for human purposes.
It may be that drawing down CO2 for a couple of hundred years might be enough in practice, if some new technology for capturing and sequestering CO2 arises in that time window of course. That is of course, a guess.
Planting trees sounds Simple enough to many people but it’s not as straightforward as you might imagine.
You want very fast growing varieties but you want them to be tolerant of drought and not require substantial nutrient — since fertilisers require FHCs. You want to be able to harvest them when their net uptake falls to zero so they can be replaced with new stock while the carbon and lignin and roots remain locked up.
You need to be able to protect them from fire and parasitic organisms, not disrupt local ecology and to be growing on land that is not in demand for other purposes. And all of this must be scaleable and fit within a viable budget.
Bear in mind too that tree cover decreases albedo causing temporary positive feedbacks in ways analogous to the loss of Arctic sea ice, so any substantial amount of woody vegetation or even grasses is going to have some positive as well as negative forcings. Even if you could devise a fully scaleable cost-maintainable revegetation program to biosequester CO2 the positive forcings would exceed the negative forcings for probably the first third to half of the life of the program.
That’s why I rather like the idea of using algae. It’s high yield, requires little maintenance and can be raised in ways that would have nearly zero impact on local ecology and on land which nobody was interested in using. You’re going to draw down far more CO2 per m2 with algae than with grasses or trees, and disposing if it securely will surely be far easier.
There are some ideas already on the drawing board. Cost estimates start at $200 tonne and go up from there, so it would certainly be better to move faster
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121004-fake-trees-to-clean-the-skies
Still, you can do some simple arithmetic to see that $200/tonne removal would not be economically catastrophic. Australia’s current emissions are around 0.5 billion tonnes a year, so removing a year’s worth would cost $100 billion. With even modest growth, national income in 2050 will exceed $2 trillion. So, if we put in 5 per cent of national income every year from 2050 to 2150 we could remove 100 years worth of emissions at the current rate, which would be more than the entire emissions since European settlement.
Anti-science denialism is a core component of corporate-oligarchic capitalism. Sure, science is fine when it provides outcomes and technologies that they want; like weapons, surveillance tools and propaganda media. But science is not welcome when it provides uncomfortable data. The way that right-wingers pick and choose which science they want to accept and implement and which they want to reject is entirely rational and pragmatic. It would indeed continue to be the correct way for them to hold on to wealth and power indefinitely were it not for one drawback. A wrecked environment will not be able to support any economy.
I think Prof. J.Q. beholds the complete victory of corporate-oligarchic capitalism… and then doesn’t want to behold it. (It’s understandable, we all want to grasp at straws of hope.) The TEA party types for sure are delusional but the Koch brothers (for example) know exactly what they are doing. The TEA party types have no power. The Koch brothers do. What happens or doesn’t happen in our society, with respect to the economy, is almost entirely determined by the oligarchs. The majority of the people have little or no say in the matter. Our so-called democracy is a fig-leaf for this reality. No matter who we vote for we get neocon economic and climate policy.
science advances one funeral at a time…
@John Quiggin
How can it be consistent to propose an abatement program at $200 per tonne while proposing a carbon price of $50 per tonne? If you regard $200 per tonne as a reasonable cost for biosequestratiom, then surely that’s what the carbon price should be?
@Watkin Tench
The evidence already has smacked them in the face like a brick, it’s just that they’re too dim (or ideologically blinkered) to have noticed it yet. I doubt that they ever will, because the acceptance of the reality of climate change entails accepting the end of growth capitalism /hobbyhorse.
As nick j points out, science advances one funeral at a time.
@Fran Barlow
I think Prof Q’s points is that, while removing CO2 from the atmosphere is considerably more expensive than reducing emissions, it could sitll be done if necessary, i.e. the costs are not completely untenable. I don’t think the Prof is suggesting that that approach is necessarily the most sensible one, just that it’s potentially available.
@John Quiggin
Your enthusiasm was catching and I enjoyed reading Ms Gaia Vince’s piece about the fake trees whose price was expected to drop substantially – as one would expect – with mass production. (And a possible part answer to Fran Barlow’s point: the carbon thus captured would be valuable). But did you notice the boo-boo by the former science journalist and author of “Adventures in the Anthropocene?
How much confidence can you place in the expertise of someone who says the temperature of the Earth would be -18 degrees C if there were no atmospheric CO2.
Just Google for Stefan-Boltzmann Law and discover that -18 degrees C is Earth’s approx. blackbody temperature as modified by its 0.3 albedo…. As every rabid denialist knows water vapour is the big warmer of our planet as GHG.
Fran, it is pretty clear now that a $50 a tonne carbon price will cause CO2 levels in the atmosphere to, on a human time scale, stabilise. If we wanted to lower atmospheric carbon dioxide levels we could achieve that by raising the carbon price. But the golden rule when one finds oneself in a hole is to stop digging and a $50 a tonne carbon price is roughly the stop digging price. And as we have seen in Australia, we can’t even get politicians to agree on digging more slowly, so aiming for a $50 carbon price is probably a good goal to have for now.
The answers are in the book “What’s The Matter With Kansas”.
Ultimately the ‘right’ set the language/idea agenda, are obsessive-compulsive activists and highly motivated to capture people. They’re more organised and energised to see their language/ideas succeed.
When was the last time you heard an ambit claim ‘of the Left’, that the ‘right’ had to respond to? The Left are always having to react to conservative ideas, barely advancing their own at all anymore.
Daivid:
Economic growth isn’t the same as growth in resource consumption. Hopefully we’ll continue to see big leaps forward in making more with less. Ultimately we have no choice since the several billion folk who currently eke out an existence on a few dollars a day will eventually climb on board the growth capitalism /hobbyhorse.
@Ronald Brak
Stop digging may well be a golden rule but that seems unlikely to be close to enough. If the hole you’re in is about to collapse on you, you need to get out before that occurs.
Clearly, 400 ppm is causing warming. If we stabilised here we would keep warming with all that implies. We’d warm more slowly than at 450 but in either case you’re still warming so you’re still in the hole and sinking, or something. Even if we get back to 280 ppm we remain warmer than 120 years ago and of course the heat in the ocean will still underpin warming at the surface.
@Tim Macknay
As I’ve said before, I’d like the price to be at least double what PrQ suggests, but I’d be looking to fit the abatement and drawdown into one fungible budget. If the cost of either turned out to be greater, then I’d favour adjusting it until we got there. Maybe $200tCO2e is really what it would cost, but if I recall correctly, even defence spending here isn’t 5% of GDP and the current regime says $35bn or whatever it is for an NBN is too much.
1) Devotions are an effective means of resisting the state. American preservation of aristocratic egalitarian culture over european statism has come not by teason but by moral and religious passion. That is why conservatives win elections. They understand morality.
2) The fact that you use the term climate science rather than global warming is indicative of your own use of obscurantism. It is not that conservatives do not accept science, but that science and pseudoscience put to immoral ends is something to be resisted.
3) I am fairly sure that I understand the arguments as well as anyone, particularly in what qualifies as science (operational causality) and hypothesis (correlation), that the matter is not sufficiently settled to warrant state intervention. We should not forget that the twentieth century was plagued by pseudodscience in every field.
Which Hayek warned us about, and I have only recenly fully understood.
At present climate models and theory are no better in structure than Goodall’s apes, marx’s pseudoscientific economics, keynes’ restatement of Marx in obscurant terms, most anthropology, all of social science, freudian psychology, Adorno’s outright fabrications, feminist pseudoscience, and obilisophical postmodernism.
So conservatives are following THE EVIDENCE that non operational claims are almost universally pseudoscientific. Snd climate science fails the test of operationalusm.
Period.
Here in Aust the Left seem to me to have won ,or are winning, the day on what the Right in America call ‘moral ‘(euthanasia ,gay marriage, and a few others ) issues but not on what they refer to as economic (not moral?) ones .
I think both sides get too hung up in the ideological name calling. I have not done the maths but my instinct is that what we are facing is nothing more than a modified prisoners’ dilemma game (in which the costs of action are borne upfront and the benefits deferred by some time) Given its absolute contribution to climate change, why should a purely rational actor choose to bear up fronts costs for a deferred outcome over which we have no influence.
But, if there was no CO2, the ice would advance (if you don’t believe me, ask Maurice Newman), and the world would cool. The amount of water vapour in the atmosphere drops rapidly with temperature, so the greenhouse warming supplied by the water vapour drops rapidly – and pretty soon the temperature is -18C.
Great Piece, John.
Have you ever considered running for public office?
@Kvantum
There may well be a point buried in your post, but if there is, you’ll need to try a second draft to communicate it.
Rational actors bear upfront costs for purely prospective benefits all the time. People take out insurance, giving up forever scope for immediate gratification to avoid future losses. They also do it when they forego consumption so that their children can live better than them now and in the future. They hope their children will do likewise with their children, and live long enough to see their grandchildren repeat this trade.
Self-evidently, if one is willing to sacrifice now on the strength of the highly attenuated satisfaction in the future of seeing your grandchildren live well enough to do what you have done, it makes little sense to indulge in consumption at the expense of the integrity of the ecosystem you hope will underpin those children and grandchildren.
I wonder whether an ‘exit counselling’ approach would be the best way to convince right wing climate change deniers to accept the science. I note that the absurdity of many right wing beliefs mirrors the absurdity of the belief systems of cults. Maybe an approach where right wing people are gently encouraged to spend time with non-right wing people, think for themselves and question their assumptions could be helpful. Scientific information could be presented to them in a non-confrontational way.
That is why you deny.
My point ( although badly put) is much simpler. Assuming the reality of climate change, whatever Australia does will have no effect on avoiding or even attenuating its deleterious effects given its relatively small absolute contributions to emissions. Effective mitigation will fall upon the US and China ( and in the future India). Whatever cost Australia assumes upfront will have no effect on the outcome whatsoever, so why not just avoid them and free-ride?
or=”#comment-240182″>@Fran Barlow
@Kvantum
Self-evidently, we can’t simply free-ride, firstly because other states might impose sanctions — and why wouldn’t they? — and secondly because as the 15th largest emitter by volume and the largest per capita in the G20 our failure to act would provide aid and comfort to others wanting to free ride. What state who could argue that we were emitting more by one criterion or another wouldn’t simply say — “after Australia”? Canada wants to play beggar my neighbour and is the obvious comparator — a similarly populated state that is mainly English-speaking and a member of the Commonwealth and which has a regime like ours ill-disposed to act and a substantial interest in FHCs.
There are about 177 other states who could in theory say “after Australia” and what could we say in objection? Indeed, could we really object to the US or China doing little while expressly free-riding? We would look utterly bankrupt. We would deserve the condemnation of the world and I would support sanctions. Maybe we already deserve them.
But that is an ethical preference in which you are willing to bear costs in the hope of achieving international collaboration. My bet is such collaboration will not occur and therefore do not believe it to be in our interest to act in a manner which reduces present consumption. (I will of course change my view and adapt as I believe the costs and benefits evolve with circumstances)
Which states do you believe would impose sanctions? Free-riding is banally common and we live with it everyday in a globalised world.
@Earl McSquirellson
A great slogan: “Vote for John Quiggin – running away from public office since 2000!”
JQ’s analysis is very Anglo-Saxon. Fortunately the world’s carbon trajectory is not determined by the USA, Australia and Canada, the countries to which his analysis applies. Even in the UK, political denialism is weak and policy is medium green, not very different from the EU average.
China: it’s a struggle between vested interests in coal and the renewables lobby, within a scientifically literate élite whose power is threatened by rampant air pollution. The renewables side are slowly winning. Beijing City has announced large cuts in future coal burning – touted by Xinhua, presumably as a good example. China has not yet officially adopted a coal cap, let alone the language of energy transition, but there’s no sense of delay.
India: the last election brought to power a hardline nationalist technocrat who has promised mass rural electrification. The state of the grid and the coal and nuclear industries (dozy Permit Raj behemoths) preclude any other options than large-scale wind and solar. The power ministry has leaked plans to raise the wind target to 10 GW a year: eight times the previous ambition.
EU: Putin is adding determination to previously agreed targets. Germany passed 50% of daily domestic electricity consumption on August 18th.
Developing world: solar taking off in Chile, Mexico, South Africa, Turkey. Shortly to be joined by Saudi Arabia and Brazil, even Iran.
This is what happens when renewable costs fall below grid parity, as they have more or less everywhere. The fossil lobby isn’t dead. But it has to shift from denialist smoke to hard legislative obstruction, and highly visible and unpopular tax changes to cripple the new competitors.
In climate change, I predict the end of political denialism in 5 years not 10. Coinciding roughly with Rupert Murdoch’s inevitable exit from his media empire. The prospective diadochoi lack his poisonous combination of great business talent and an industrial-strength cringe. Ayers has it, but he’s in poor health and in the end a mere employee.
@James Wimberley
I’ll definitely use that. Much more up to the minute than “If nominated I will not run. If elected I will not serve”
@Curt Doolittle
Worth reading Curt’s comment in full for his claim:
“I am fairly sure that I understand the arguments as well as anyone”
which ought to be up there with
“I am aware of all Internet traditions”
as an illustration of the collective Dunning-Kruger effect that prevails on the right.
Keeping in mind the urgency … Rate of ice mass loss since 2009 continues to escalate:
http://bit.ly/1mqd1fd
This has occurred after the entire preceding period was between 280ppm and 394 ppm, not 450 ppm.
@Ikonoclast
This is the key factor, although you need a particular form of pro-capitalist politics to ensure that business interests in avoiding some science, control government policy.
It seems to me that too many economists want capitalism and sustainable ecology. You cannot have both.
@John Quiggin
What’s most amusing for me in Curt Doolittle’s bafflegab is the appeal against climate science as pseudoscience, resorting to the language of pseudo-epistemology.
Curt is trying to sound analytic, doubtless because he fancies that mentioning the usual zombie talking points won’t impress anyone here. His tactic however, simply reveals that he doesn’t understand anything important about scientific methodology, nor the place of science in guiding public policy.
Curt implies that climate science is being used for immoral ends then merely opines that it’s not sufficiently settled to found state intervention. He nods at the pseudoscience if the 20th century, but fails to specify what he has in mind and explain the ways in which this pseudoscience is similar to climate science. Really, he is appealing by implication against physics without explaining why conservatives fail to resist it as immoral elsewhere.
Really, this is just denialism with a sloppy makeover.
@Ivor
This is absolutely true. We cannot have capitalism and a sustainable economy within a healthy environment. Capitalism and sustainability are antithetical. Capitalism demands endless growth at environmental expense. Capitalism and democracy are also antithetical. Capitalism’s natural tendency is to monopoly and oligarchy. It will always move in this direction with only temporary checks and rebellions provoked by its worst crises.
The oligarchs come to own and direct, via donations, the major parties and the major politicians. The evidence of capitalism’s history is totally clear on this. Ask yourself today why the Qld Labor Govt was thrown out for wanting to sell public assets and the Qld Lib Govt now wants to sell public assets. Why will neither party commit to uphold the people’s wishes and keep public assets? Because the oligarchs own them that’s why.
The oligarchs are richer and more in control than ever before now and continue perforce (because of their own self-interests) to make decisions which are incompatible with the good of the people and the good of the environment. Capitalism is a system predicated on endless growth and endless capital accumulation. It cannot function in any other mode. As such, it is in fundamental contradiction with the requirements for sustainability and protection of the environment.
The challenge is to develop a sustainable, renewable and circular economy. This will not, indeed cannot, occur under capitalism. Yes, the bourgeois economists are blind. They cannot see beyond capitalism. The ideologues of capitalism invoke binary choices. To them there is only capitalism or soviet-style communism (which was dictatorship plus state capitalism anyway). There are other possibilities but the ideologues of capitalism cannot envisage or admit to them.
In summary, our problem is not just the outcomes of capitalism (inequality, endless imperialist wars, environmental destruction, unsustainability), our problem is with the system that generates all these things.
@Ikonoclast
Despite being a Green I am beginning to start deprecating the term ‘renewable’. It’s undoubtedly effective in marketing terms and is very well establsihed as a term in the public mind, but looked at carefully, it’s a misnomer, IMO.
Energy sources can no more be ‘renewable’ than that any machine can effect perpetual motion. The kinds of energy source typically accorded the title ‘renewable’ are those which harvest energy inputs deriving ultimately (mostly, theough geothermal is an exception) from outside of the Earth and that on our human timelines are relatively abundant, non-rival and non-excludable. There is also a definite limit on how much can be harvested at any one time so that ‘eating the future’ is harder. Plainly, we can’t harvest more direct and indirect solar energy (or in the case of tidal power, more lunar energy) than is at the surface at an(e.g. wind, solar) at any given moment. Finally, the harvest and conversion process tends to have a fairly small footprint.
It might be better to use the term ‘sustainable’ energy sources or ‘clean abundant technology’ or non-fossil energy than renewables, just for the sake of tidyness.
hmm …
I should have said:
@Kvantum
Are you familiar with the literature on Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemmas? When players have histories and can be ranked by trustworthiness, playing nice in the first iteration usually has a long-term payoff.
@Fran
For the sake of tidiness ‘sustainability’ is perhaps not the best term. It is a discursive tool rather than a meaningful descriptor – a very flexible concept which has been widely adopted as a means of greenwash and put to various other ends. Decarbonizing the global economy – which I assume is the idea – suggests an approach that pays more attention to sufficiency and not just efficiency given the extent to which energy is embodied in ‘actually existing’ technologies. As noted, harvest and conversion involve a footprint.
‘Clean abundant technology’ also seems a little too sanguine, unless you prefix it with ‘relatively’, while ‘non-fossil energy’ is better but still (given the implications of whole life cycles) somewhat inaccurate.
Yet, despite their untidiness, if you are wanting to convince rightwingers about climate science then perhaps these discursive tools might be of some assistance??