After being in Copenhagen for five days now, there are some thoughts running through my head that I’d like to express and share with y’all. This is going to be short, and probably not all that eloquent, but it will help me get some points across that I think are really important at this critical moment in the fight for our climate. I do want to say that while this post is critical of the way things are happening at COP15, I still deeply respect the youth of all delegations who are inside this conference, trying to scrap out a decent deal for the world. I thank them for all their efforts, but am coming from a different perspective here.
I came to Copenhagen hesitant and nervous….not wanting to place too much hope into the talks that had effectively been castrated by the UNFCCC leadership and Yvo de Boer. But I still wanted to be here all the same; after all, it’s supposedly the climate party of the century! So I hooked up with some French activists and an amazing organization called Climate Justice Action and planned on doing all that I could during the two weeks of the conference. I wanted to rally, protest, take part in negotiations, have my voice heard and above all- help bring a fair, ambitious and binding treaty out of Copenhagen. But upon arriving in Denmark, I entered a catatonic state of dumbfoundedness…having finally come to the realization, like so many others (James Hansen, Breakthrough Institute etc), that these talks were doomed to fail and there was nothing anyone could do about it. As quickly as it had come, my dream of that fair, ambitious and binding treaty that we’ve all been working towards disappeared in a smoggy cloud of yen, dollars, euros and political and moral weakness.
Since 2006, I’ve been a part of the youth climate movement and I always believed that it was possible to achieve the sort of change we needed through the United States Congress, the United Nations Conference of Parties or other governmental bodies. To put it short and use that worn out term, I believed in “the system”. I believed that governments did have the power to stop climate change and did in fact want to stop climate change. I thought COP 15 would be a conference of folks dedicated to doing whatever was necessary to solve the climate crisis, regardless of money, corporate influence or politics.
I was wrong.
The first five days of the conference have been full of back door dealings by Annex 1 countries, oppression of “developing” countries like Tuvalu by official delegations and a lack of desire for a legitimate deal in Copenhagen by members of the US delegation. So, even with tens of thousands of people working on a global climate treaty for the past fifteen years, we have yet to reach any sort of legitimate, legally binding treaty that addresses climate change and climate justice while refusing to give into corporate and big business pressure. You would think that when you put the world’s top negotiators, scientists, governmental representatives and UN hot shots together for 15 years, they’d at least be able to figure something out right?
What’s the *#&$#@&!^ problem?
The answer is simple. Capitalism is the problem. Our global economic system is the problem. This “profit above all” attitude that we’ve been working with since the dawn of Adam Smith and modern economic system will no longer work if we want to continue living on this Earth with our fellow brothers and sisters. The evidence towards this is numerous and incontrovertible. Take this astounding fact for example. There have been two occurrences in the past twenty years when carbon emissions have not skyrocketed upwards, and have even dropped a little bit. The first was in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the former Soviet eastern bloc country’s economies essentially all collapsed. That bloc lost 40% of their production capacity, and thus, their carbon emissions went down 40% , a significant amount. The second time when global carbon emissions have not continued on their hasty flight up was this past year, during the “global financial crisis”, when emissions slightly leveled off due to the slow death of many parts of our modern economic system. Let this example be a wake up call, let it motivate you, make you angry and make you want to act!
With little more than a week to go in this conference, I don’t know what sort of hack deal will be put on the table. I don’t know if it will help protect small island states or fragile economies threatened the most by climate change. I am pretty sure it will be extremely lenient on big polluters like the US, India and China. My only hope is that the coming actions and demonstrations organized by the Climate Collective and Climate Justice Action will show the determination and passion of real people dedicated to real system change to confront the awful truth of climate change and tell the fat cat delegates from rich, polluting countries what this world really needs: SYSTEM CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE!
from Copenhagen with love and solidarity
Well my friend, I guess you have found out what many of us have come to realize: the money driven economy is an established dogma taken fro granted and unquestioned by generalized ignorance about its far reachings and deep controls and effects that defeat eacha nd every effort of coordinated action to do a general benefit to humankind, simpli because, no beneficial coordinated effort is done if there is no money in it.
check out the Zeitgeist Movement, I think it is so far the most coherent activist movement that promotes change from the roots: the system.
http://vimeo.com/7857584
checkout also the zeitgeist movies, and the venus project proposals
http://www.thevenusproject.com/
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
I’m not going to argue with the political weakness and the inability to make meaningful progress. But what I do want to push back on is capitalism. Yes, it has been a major factor in the mess(es) we’re in right now. But in order to transition to a clean, sustainable society, we are going to need technology that currently isn’t ready (unless of course we want economic collapse and the associated political instability that goes along with it as you touched on). And honestly, capitalism has been remarkably effective at promoting entrepreneurship, innovation and discovery. Sure it’s not the only factor, but if we want clean energy on the scale that we need, I honestly can’t think of another way to get there. However, that doesn’t mean that our macroeconomic systems are blameless. But just because the global economic institutions are closed, opaque and don’t always have the world’s best interests at heart, doesn’t mean that capitalism doesn’t have a place in fixing this problem. Yes, what deals and agreements we have right now and are likely to get soon will be inadequate, but the time frame in which we need solutions is faster than (I believe) we can dismantled these global economic institutions and replace them with functional ones. Capitalism will have it’s place at least in the short term, whether we like it or not, and I think it’s important to recognize the tools it gives us in terms of actually transforming the physical working of our society.
No matter what is done nothing will improve until we all address the main reason we are where we are, the world is over populated, people are living longer and a vast amount of effort and energy is put into extending this lifetime further, now, how do we address that?
As Juliana mentioned, Capitalism may still work. What will not work is the world culture of excess and greed, which is brought about partly do to capitalism. That cycle of the two feeding off of one another must be broken. But the questions remains, how?
I agree with Juliana Williams that Capitalism is a good tool for moving into the future. Please do not confuse Capitalism with greed. The major corporations are rife with greed, pure and simple. I have been watching the OneClimate channel and reading reports and see a glaring problem with the U.S. Our nation is strutting around playing the role of a “rich nation” when in reality we are the greatest Debtor Nation that has ever existed. There would be no polution problems if the world was still on a gold standard; however, since we are on fiat currencies world wide now, and integrity has been pushed out of capitalism and its variations, we do have the problems. Jeremy, you really need to push the abolishment of fiat currency and the return to Ethics classes in schools from G1 to G16.
Capitalism stifles innovation and discovery. Corporations buy up new technologies and discoveries that threaten their competitiveness, including technologies that relate to our work of trying to stop the climate crisis.
Capitalism isn’t “a major factor” in creating the mess, it is *the* factor–a system of privileging private profits over social benefit, economic growth and wealth over the survivability of people and the planet. It has created the mess and we are not going to solve the ecological crisis without fundamentally changing our economic system.
Yes, we need to provide solutions (reforms) in the short term that promote just and sustainable policies while maintaining “the system”, but in the long term the aims of our movement need to be transforming the entire economic and social system that are based on democratic, just and sustainable values (revolution).
A “green” revolution shouldn’t just be a buzz word, and people who actually believe in “revolution” in this movement should speak up more like the writer of this post did!
Ditto Juliana.
I also wanted to add that Adam Smith and several other initial capitalist theorists posited that the system would only work if there were STRONG TIES of trust, collaboration, and open information and an equal playing field between actors. Central theories of economics are also based on assumptions of zero transporation costs, no market power, zero externalities, and “consumer desires” that are autonomous from the circumstances of the world around them (ie, what you wnat to by is unaffected by other people or cultural norms). None of those things sound very familiar in today’s economy, right? These are flaws about our basic assumptions about value and how power is created and transformed, rather than flaws in a process of economic exchange. Seems to me that the real problem is not as much the system of exchanging value (which modern economics shares with ecology and social relationships), but rather what we value and who gets to decide how those values are enacted.
That definitely still fits in with systems change, but I’d encourage a multi-faceted and critical approach to that systems change rather than blanket and superficial caricatures of much more complex issues. Understanding complexity and the ever-evolving process of transforming a system is the only way we’re going to make it happen.
hi folks,
i don’t want to get into an argument about the virtues or vices of capitalism, you can read what i have to say about the matter elsewhere: http://www.zmag.org/blog/view/4021
however, there is a fundamentally flawed assertion in juliana’s response i wanted to say something about: the issue is not technology. if we can build missile guidance systems that can navigate through canyons, turn around on a dime, modulate their velocity to minimize drag, etc., we already have had everything we need in the way of technological development. in fact, it may well be likely that we’ve had everything we’ve needed since at least the brundtland report, if not sooner.
the issue of scale is not “oh my god, the problem is so big, we’ll never get out of it without the next techno-fix” – the issues of scale are: do we really need to produce and consume so much? the united states, our country, has the world’s largest per capita footprints, and largest historical burden for emissions. full stop. i didn’t ask to be born into this, either, but so it is.
but we could meet 20% reductions in emissions right away through concerted action to stop wasting, stop producing goods that are intentionally planned for obsolescence so as to fly through value chains (and thus, material flows) as fast as possible. as bill mckibben put it when he spoke at the new school on october 22nd, it would be “like taking a haircut”.
right now, what we need is not more selling or more shilling. we need to bring our behavior into account from the point of view of indigenous people in the U.S., and the global community of nations. we need to stop foisting onto them what we take to be “legitimate” forms of economic and social development (that our corporations end up controlling), and address the fundamental problems in our own nation – the financial reform passed by the House this past week is one, small, attempt. it must be buttressed with countless other ways of holding our elected officials and heads of federal/state/local agencies and programs accountable.
but most, within our own movement, we might take a lesson from the american farmer, or at least one who is honest, like joel salacin in food inc.:
“A lot of people wonder, you know is this real? Can you really feed the world? You know, whatever, that whole thing is such a specious argument. Yes, we’re every bit as efficient. Especially if you plug in all the inefficiencies of the industrial system. You know, I’ve had people come up to farmers markets, you know, and say “What? Three dollars a dozen for eggs?” And they’re drinking a 75 cent can of soda! I’m always impressed by how successful we have been at hitting the bullseye on the wrong target. I mean we’ve learned, for example, we’ve learned in cattle, we’ve learned how to, how to plant harvest and fertilize corn using global positioning satellite technology, and nobody sits back and asks, but should we be feeding cows corn? We’ve become a culture of technicians. We’re all into the how of it, and nobody’s stepping back and asking, but why? I mean, a culture that just views a pig as a pile of proto-plasmic inanimate structure, to be manipulated by whatever creative design the human can foist on that critter, will probably view individuals in its community, and other cultures in the community of nations, with the same type of disdain and disrespect and controlling type mentality”
as an American whose parents are of Indian origin, who has watched the effects of the so-called “green revolution” in India, i sincerely hope this is something we can all agree on: capitalism, green or otherwise notwithstanding, we certainly don’t need the technological mindset, or technicity, that leads us to ignore fundamental questions of equity.
it’s another question whether replacing capitalism is necessary to for long-term climate stabilization, but in the short-term, it would behoove all of us to recognize, especially now that open government initiatives are finally starting, that American Capitalism is as much a myth as Soviet “Socialism” – neither have worked, or work now, like their proponents claim.
Thanks for posting this Aaron. Its right on point.
I posted something similar back in June particularly about post-capitalist visions, and how we can move past our current system of death and destruction. If you’re interested, check it out here: http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2008/06/21/power-shift-to-economic-justice-and-democracy/
I agree with what Aaron Petcoff and Dave said as well. I’m happy more people are speaking up to move this movement in a more pointed direction!
If people are interested in hearing more about revolutionary visions, strategies, and analysis, check out this new project: http://visionsofspring.org We’re just getting off the ground, so bare with us and stay tuned!
Best,
Brian Kelly
Fantastic piece and great update! Thanks for this!
Word up. Thank you for this.
There is a major distinction here between the function of capitalism in structuring economic transactions and the politico-economic institutions that exert massive power over governments and the people of the world. There are flaws in capitalism in that it doesn’t fully reflect people’s values and prioritizes profits over immeasurable social benefits. However, I fundamentally disagree with the assertion that capitalism stifles discovery and innovation, particularly as it applies to the kinds of high tech development we need to improve clean energy sources. Without providing a market for these technologies,the level of research and commercialization needed to really transform our energy system simply won’t happen. No, markets aren’t a magical fix for this (as I discus here ) but they are important.
Second, Dave I appreciate your point that we need to use less energy, less stuff. I’m totally on board with that. But I have my doubts that we’ll be able to achieve that level of change in the timeframe that we need. Which is why I bring up clean energy technology. It is debatable whether existing technology is sufficient to meet our global energy ‘needs,’ but I think it’s fairly clear that we do not yet have the capacity to produce and install even that existing technology on the timeframe necessary either. Which is why we need both – a transformation of the way we use stuff and a transformation of the stuff we do use. There are a lot of people who are going to resist this level of change (as we all well know) and if we can use the market to our advantage to get cleaner ways of using energy out there, then I personally think we should do it. Unless we want a world where millions of people around the world endure massive suffering because we couldn’t switch to cleaner energy sources, we need this technology.
Yes, we need systemic change. The global economic system needs to change (I lived in Seattle during the WTO protests – I do get this). It will require confrontation, because those in power rarely like to give it up. This needs to happen. But capitalism can work to our advantage as well. Moral absolutes don’t get us very far in a complicated, contradictory world.
juliana, all,
with respects, i really need to check out of this conversation and others it has spurred, and much else astride. finals and bruised ribs and such.
since you mentioned seattle, here’s a thought experiment about another protest dear to my heart. what would the world be like today if the following obtained:
1) we knew everything about the bush administration’s actions from Nov. 2000 – 2.16.03, that we now know, but we knew it all and understood it well before 2.16.03;
2) on 2.17.03, magically, all the productive capacity and industrial infrastructure in the united states that is currently devoted to war-making was instantly converted to meeting mitigation and adaptation needs on climate;
3) on 2.18.03, again magically, the kinds of partnerships (like blue-green’s with mondragon) that depend upon cooperation (such as those internal to exxon – and to underscore the point, don’t think for a second toyota does not have a five year plan) were extensive throughout all of the communities which were no longer dependent on the war system for jobs;
4) on 2.19.03, maybe not so magically but for the corporate media, everyone out on the streets earlier was creating action plans around how to implement, at the community level, the implications of the IPCC Third Assessment Report;
5) on 2.20.03, almost impossible to even imagine without laughing but work with me here, that instead of trying to control the debt (at home and broad) that conflict creates, and instead of running up the systemic risk that the dismantling of capital controls in the 1990s made possible over the past decade, the banks and insurers and investors and everyone else genuine worried about rate of return and long-term yield were to say “you know what, there’s this whole conversation around national industrial policy happening on the ground, maybe the only thing we are good for is facilitating how folks want to manufacture the things we really need. let’s let them do that, and heal from the ravages of the past century that we have been responsible for, more than once.”
fantastic, no? but let me ask everyone on this thread and everyone reading it: suppose all that happened in a matter of days. at time of writing, it is not yet lunchtime in copenhagen. suppose all that happened.
would we be then talking at lunchtime, around our own kitchen tables, about growth in markets, or how to downshift them? what would we be talking about contracting? who would we talking about having the mechanisms necessary to adapt to climatic changes?
if someone were to say, “what would the world be like if the U.S. spent more than the rest of the world combined to build (now) useless, wasteful, dangerous stuff like bunker-busting nukes and Boeing-made airplanes to drop them from?” would we laugh at the very idea? would we cringe at it being a possible reality? would we be thankful that such possibility is, like feudalism, a stage in social evolution that we have progressed beyond?
would we eat?
look, i’m no more a marxist that i am a mckibbenist, ted nordhausist, pachuri-ist, or obamaist. the only thing that i care about is what they get right. here in this world, here and now. i have no illusions about any of this, and i deeply respect the work that you for one, julia, have been doing. the only thing i care about is getting it right.
are we so late in the day that we cannot be sure?
Juliana:
Maybe we’re splitting hairs here. I don’t think any of us think capitalism is going to be gone tomorrow. But saying we’re against capitalism isn’t moral absolutism. I’m against capitalism because its bad. Because it stifles innovation and discovery. Capitalism kills millions upon millions of people. It is a death system.
To say that capitalism is the cause of human innovation and discovery is to do a tremendous injustice to the ingenuity of the human spirit – a spirit which cannot be beaten down even under the most perverse of economic systems.
But in terms of capitalism’s EFFECT on that human spirit, well, it commodifies all innovation and discover. Enter patents, copyrights, trademarks, borders, lack of access to internet and communication, and the like. Enter TRADE SECRETS. The public doesn’t have access to the sum of all knowledge because rich, greedy capitalist owners STEAL the knowledge that was created by the people and claim it as their own.
I think its important to properly place human discovery where it belongs: WITH PEOPLE. Capitalism doesn’t cause discovery – it constantly stops it. Markets don’t help human interaction – they instill antisocial values in people who are otherwise cooperative and sharing. My friend Michael Albert who runs ZNet and co-developed the participatory economic model of post-capitalist economics has this to say, succinctly, about markets: “Markets aren’t a little bad, or even just very bad in some contexts. Instead, in all contexts, markets instill anti-social motivations in buyers and sellers, misprice items that are exchanged, misdirect aims regarding what to produce in what quantities and by what means, mis-remunerate producers, introduce class division and class rule, and embody an imperial logic that spreads itself throughout [all] economic life.”
You say you agree we need widespread economic and social transformation. Well then let’s stop defending a system that has these anti-human values, define what we DO WANT, and be pragmatic about linking our need for short term reforms with our desire for long-term revolution.
Brian Kelly
I never said Capitalism causes innovation, but it sure as hell spurs it forward. Why do we think that innovation in the Soviet Union was almost non-existent? Why has Silicon valley been so productive in developing technologies that benefit people? When people have greater incentives than just the sheer thrill of discovery or altruistic motives to solve a problem, then we get focused development that bring those initial discoveries to the public.
Yes, people make those discoveries (not markets). But my point is that if we want to get these innovations out to the public at the scale necessary to avert climate disaster, markets are the best tool I know of to do that in time.
Here’s the problem – we’re in a world that has global problems that transcend borders and transcend countries’ capacities to deal with them (carbon emissions, fisheries collapse, water shortages, etc). We won’t be able to solve them with just local solutions because that doesn’t avoid the tragedy of the commons and doesn’t change existing transnational operations. This means we need to deal with this on a global scale. So yes, we absolutely need to reform macroeconomic systems.
But economic transactions alone do not kill social interactions. The two can coexist.
I just read all of this and want to thank aaron for creating the space for this discussion to happen.
Juliana, I don’t really want to jump into this conversation but wanted to push back against the “tragedy of the commons” theory that has some how become the environment movement’s justification for the need of national or international solutions.
This years winner of the noble prize for economics has been working on proving that acceptance of the “tragedy of the commons theory” is, in itself, the tragedy of the last 50 years.
here is a quote of her’s
International donors and nongovernmental organizations, as well as national governments and charities, have often acted, under the banner of environmental conservation, in a way that has unwittingly destroyed the very social capital — shared relationship, norms, knowledge and understanding — that has been used by resource users to sustain the productivity of natural capital over the ages. The effort to preserve biodiversity should not lead to the destruction of institutional diversity. . . . These institutions are most in jeopardy when central government officials assume that they do not exist (or are not effective) simply because the government has not put them in place.
Check out Elinor Ostrom and more of her work.
People when left to their own devices come up with creative solutions that actually work and are based in cooperation with the natural systems that they depend upon. Can governments work to build social capitol and the ground for innovative solutions instead of international false solutions?
by the way I love you all
I first want to say that this is a great post and, like A. Petcoff, I’m really glad to hear people in the green movement talking about the big picture like this. I also think that this thread is super productive and brings up a lot of the key issues around this question of what will it take to save our planet and how does that relate to such a big task like ending capitalism.
To jump in I wanted to respond to the spirit of Aaron’s post, that there’s something about the ineffectiveness of these global summits and conferences of world leaders that doesn’t seem accidental and seems more deeply rooted in our society. Fundamentally I think that’s the point that Julianna is missing, a truly green capitalism is NOT POSSIBLE. It’s not like “oh that’d be nice too, but we’ve got this more urgent thing right now. Once we stop global warming we can work on getting rid of capitalism.”
Capitalism is a system that necessarily grows based on short term gains. Capitalism isn’t greed but it is necessarily profit driven and profit is necessarily short term. It seems weird that all these industry folks can’t seem to see beyond the next 20 years, but that’s because how profit works. Profit is not about looking ahead, it’s about looking at the man next to you in the race and just beating him in at this moment. If companies did R&D for the future on the planetary scale they’d be left in the dust by other companies that feed millions coca-cola by blowing up mountains.
But this still seems strange, why don’t we just get all the capitalist in a room (one in a charming place with a little mermaid statue … like Copehnagen!) and say “look we’re all going to be screwed if we don’t work together so let’s control this beast called capitalism. If we control it we can use its productive power [and it sure does have a whole lot Julianna is right google makes my life awesome.]and do things right.” But capitalism is uncontrollable, period. Capitalism is based on dividing people from their labor, from their neighbor and from themselves to do all that producing. These productive forces combine into this crazy thing called “The Market” to which even those “in control” like Alan Greenspan are mercy to its moodswings, and it’s pretty bi-polar. The process of making all that productive force work in a sane, controllable manner IS the process of overcoming capitalism. That’s why we’re against capitalism, so we can live in a sane society that can respond in a meaningful way to things like climate change. So capitalism hasn’t just “gotten out of hand” it is out of hand.
I’ll admit though Julianna that we can’t afford to say “COP15 is full of capitalism pigs, SHUT IT DOWN!” Saying “end capitalism before we solve climate change” is just as insane as saying “Solve climate change before we end capitalism.” We need to do what we can through reform and global agreements that maintain capitalist economy, but we also need to be actively working to end it. They are not mutually exclusive. We need to promote the alternatives that are already growing around the world, and we need to build a movement to spread and defend those alternatives, all at the same time as putting people to work with green jobs and winning strong emission standards. In order to follow both projects we need to PROMOTE not downplay the explicit critique of capitalism within the climate movement. Saying “oo don’t mention capitalism yet” will end in this runaway train called capitalism derailing somewhere on a much hotter planet.
Glad this conversation is going on. Keep up the good work!
-Luis
This absolutely needs to be an open discussion. Thanks all for contributing, and here’s my $.02 a little late:
There are lots of advocates for capitalism and profits (funny, you’d think we wouldn’t need laws to protect shareholder profits if that’s what’s supposed to be the self-interest that drives the whole system.). There are some advocates for justice who say that we need to balance the growth of profits with the impact they have on people. And then there are the advocates for justice who say that no human death, no cancer cluster, no lost ecosystem is justifiable for profit. The latter is by far the smallest category, and typically has the smallest voice.
If our movement is to succeed, we need to place the megaphone directly in front of those who speak with the later voice and say, “the system needs to conform to the moral stance these people have taken, not the other way around.”
Standing with Tuvalu, with the people who live below mountaintop removal sites, with the folks who live next to major ports and shipping facilities is not an extreme position or an ineffective one. We’re not pretending to write the roadmap for the future, we are trying to re-negotiate the terms of ‘acceptable cost’.
Juliana:
The central planning that existed in the Soviet Union had the similar horrific incentives as does market allocation (workers don’t want to submit themselves to the rule of a class of coordinators, they want to control their own work and participate in managerial tasks and the implementation of innovations in their industry). I don’t think any of us are talking about that economy – which wasn’t economic democracy, but instead the rule by what I’d call a coordinator class of planners, party bosses, and intellectuals – when we say we want a democratic and planned economy.
Planning in the future must necessarily be participatory, bottom up, federated, democratic/self-managed, and solidaristic – none of which existed in the Soviet Union.
In terms of spurring innovations forward, again this is just the simple dynamic that humans are naturally curious creatures, and we will spread good ideas when we see them. It has nothing to do with markets. Patents, trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights, etc… all prevent good technology from being used by the people. They prevent popular initiatives aimed at innovation (since we don’t have access to the sum of all human knowledge) and instead capitalists are allowed to monopolize the profits while coordinator class people are allowed to monopolize the empowering work of developing innovations.
I second the stuff Luis said as well.
Best, Brian Kelly
System change in deed is what we need to start. Yes, bottom up democracy. Yes, there has to be good reason for each person to be part of the benefit as well as the effort. System chnage is the only durable climate action path.
Practical plans for “system change” are what we need now.
Check out http://www.standardsoflife.com