David Roberts has been writing about environmental talking points. But I think that skips a step. We need to examine what kind of politics the talking points are intended to contribute to.
I don't think I have to persuade anyone reading this blog to forget about informed, competent insiders trying persuasion from the inside. Romm tried that with both government and business since the early '90s. Al Gore spent decades as a Senator and Vice President of the U.S. playing insider baseball on the issue. Amory Lovins has been pursuing the "appeal to rational business self-interest" strategy since 1976!
The only thing will make change is a bunch of ordinary people getting together and exercising their democratic rights as citizens. And it is not just us dirty hippies saying that. Non-hippie former VP Al Gore says:
Yes, the new majority in Congress will be much more receptive on the importance of global warming. That's the good news. But I know from personal experience that the only thing that will make Washington really take notice and do more than give lip service to the problem of global warming is the prospect of millions of committed citizens taking action.
Non-hippie Joseph Romm writes at the end of of Hell and High Water:
... the public -- you -- could simply demand change. This is vastly preferable to waiting for multiple disasters. Global warming is the gravest threat to our long-term security. More and more people are coming to this realization every day. When people ask me what they should do, I reply, "Get informed, get outraged, and then get political."
Even Paul Hawken, co-author of Natural Capitalism and maybe the ultimate non-hippie environmentalist, says:
The single biggest influence on corporate behavior is activism, and they will be the last to let you know that. Anything activists do to make people in organizations feel that they're employed by a pariah is effective.
I'm pounding home a point that I think is pretty much settled: If we want to fight global warming, we need a serious grassroots movement.
At least part of that change has to be putting a price on carbon. That includes some sort of carbon tax, to end the subsidy of being able to emit carbon without bearing the full cost of doing so. It also includes ending other subsidies for carbon, like tax breaks for oil producers.
The mainstream is also starting to catch up with something dirty hippies have known for a long time: putting a price on carbon alone won't do it. For various reasons, markets do not respond quickly or fully to price signals when it comes to energy. (This is known as inelasticity. That demand for some goods is partially inelastic in response to price signals may not be taught in Economics 101, but is well known once you get past the introductory courses.)
George Monbiot -- a leftist with a strong preference for market solutions -- ends up admitting in his new book Heat that decarbonization will need massive rule-based regulation and public initiatives in addition to some way of charging for the social costs of carbon.
Joseph Romm -- a centrist Democrat who has worked with some of the world's largest corporations -- concludes that building, auto efficiency, and industrial efficiency standards will have to be part of any solution. Even the Stern Report(large PDF) reluctantly admits that:
Policies to price greenhouse gases, and support technology development, are fundamental to tackling climate change. However, even if these measures are taken, barriers and market imperfections may still inhibit action, particularly on energy efficiency. These barriers and failures include hidden and transaction costs such as the cost of the time needed to plan new investments; lack of information about available options; capital constraints; misaligned incentives; as well as behavioural and organisational factors affecting economic rationality in decision-making. These market imperfections result in significant obstacles to the uptake of cost-effective mitigation, and weakened drivers for innovation, particularly in markets for energy efficiency measures.
In short, anyone who seriously looks at the economics of tackling climate change comes to the conclusion that regulation (over and above putting a price on carbon) is required. Most end up supporting public initiatives as well.
This is needed even to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at 550 parts per million, let alone the 450 parts per million most scientists agree is necessary.
This has political implications. Adding a price to carbon mainly threatens the carbon lobby: the fossil fuel companies, the auto industry, possibly the utilities as well. But when you add rule-based regulations, you threaten additional constituencies: the construction industry, which does not want to face tougher building codes; the real estate industry, which doesn't want the cost of its products raised; appliance manufacturers, who don't want new appliance standards; manufacturers in general, who won't want to face new requirements for industrial efficiency. Plus you have the whole ideological constituency, which runs from glibertarians to centrist Democrats. "Regulation, ick! Old fashioned command and control! Tax and spend! Socialism! Dirty hippies!"
If you include public policy initiatives -- long distance transmission lines, for example -- you get even more opposition, because funding such initiatives will require cuts in war spending or raising taxes, probably both.
In short, once you move into what even a minimal solution requires, you take on quite an array of opponents -- the vast majority of those with money and power, not merely the carbon lobby. I'm not saying some of the rich won't support the hard choices required to end global warming, probably the same far-sighted wealthy minority that supports higher inheritance taxes on their estates. But it won't be a majority, and for the most part it won't be the wealthiest. For example, Bill Gates' father supports preserving the inheritance tax; his far wealthier son (as far as I can tell) does not.
So we will need a large movement willing to take on the rich and powerful. Maybe we will have the industries most likely to take direct hits from global warming on our side -- the insurance companies, agriculture. But even there, I wonder if we are really going to see Archer Daniels Midland and Aetna supporting higher taxes and tougher regulations. Realistically, it will have to a popular, bottom-up movement, perhaps with a few rich sugar daddies if we're lucky.
Romm and Gore both support the idea of a single-issue movement around global warming. Stern, of course, wrote an official report at government request, and it would have been improper for him to outline a political strategy. Interestingly enough, Paul Hawken -- who has been in business himself long enough to be cynical about the far-sightedness and altruism of large corporations -- thinks a stand-alone environmental movement is obsolete and needs to become part of a larger progressive movement. Without buying all the details of Hawken's vision, I think he is absolutely right on this.
I see two arguments, each devastating:
One is the improbability of getting a strong single-issue movement built around an environmental disaster, the major consequences of which will begin in twenty years at the earliest. For those who act primarily on the basis of self-interest, there will be many more immediate dangers during the next twenty years. For those who act primarily out of altruism, there will be many people dying from far more immediate causes during that time.
Yes, global warming has real potential for wiping out technological civilization within a century, perhaps within half a century. But I doubt people work emotionally in such a way that huge numbers will rally around something that far off, at least until they start seeing consequences that far exceed Katrina. I can see a lot of people wanting to do something about it as one of many issues. I just can't see many people making global warming their first priority.
Another question is how powerful a single issue movement can grow when it's not strongly linked to other movements. The most powerful single-issue movements in the U.S. are right wing -- the anti-abortion and anti-gay movements. The anti-abortion movement has not yet succeeded in outlawing most, let alone all, abortions. The gay-bashing movement has succeeded in basically one issue -- opposing marriage equality. But even there, civil unions are now the moderate position.
An equivalent level of success for the global warming movement would be if greenhouse emissions continued to rise until 2030, then leveled off until 2050, then began to drop. This is far short of even of the goal the Stern Review sets, let alone what's really needed. And can you imagine the anti-warming movement getting to anything like that level anytime soon?
The only way for a movement that fights global warming strongly enough to come into existence fast enough is as part of a larger movement -- one that explicitly supports other goals besides the environmental. I can't see that movement being conservative, libertarian, or centrist, given that conservatives, libertarians, and centrists share anti-government biases that won't let them accept strong rule-based regulations and higher taxes to fund new government initiatives. So I see no alternative but for an anti-warming movement to be part of a larger progressive movement -- to join with liberals and leftists in seeking various goals, stopping global warming among them.
In short, there is no time for consensus building; we need to engage in majority building.
Most of the needed changes are essentially economic -- taxes, regulation, public spending. Does that mean we should network only with other groups who base themselves mainly in economics - unions, health care groups, fair taxation organizations, social security preservation, and so forth?
We might also consider social justice, which includes but is not limited to economics. Women, gays, and racial minorities face economic discrimination, but regardless of class, they are also subject to various forms of direct violence. There is also the practical issue that women, racial minorities, gays, and the disabled tend on average to be further left than the U.S. population as a whole. It is a tendency, not a rule; there are many exceptions. But alienate these groups and you alienate a base you will need to win; building that majority becomes harder, not easier.
This need for allies does not just hold for environmental causes; it applies to any progressive group with demands that would require major social or economic changes. But I think what is required to minimize the global warming disaster is larger than for almost any other issue. We need unity with other groups more badly than your average lefty cause. And it is time to face the fact: it will remain a lefty cause. Yes, sensible conservatives may come to face the reality of global warming, as sensible centrists already have. I doubt they will go on to support tough new regulations over a large part of the economy and tax increases to support new public initiatives -- at least I doubt they will do so and remain conservatives and centrists.
This analysis has something in common with the one in "The Death of Environmentalism." But Shellenberger and Nordhaus understate the value of having independent environmental organizations that work within the larger context. We need coalitions, not "one big glop" organization. Imagine if feminists decided to to eliminate their organizations and dissolve into some giant glop! How much attention to you think women's issue would get? Also, given the number of attempts to slip fine-sounding anti-woman measures into the debate, we obviously need the level of expertise full-time feminist organizations can provide.
The same applies to any political fight, including environmentalism. We need the expertise that comes with full-time devotion, which means having dedicated organizations.
In short, S&N's objections seems to be to single-issue organizations. I think single-issue organizations are not only fine, but vital. My objection is to single-issue movements.
Comments
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Bart Anderson Posted 8:41 am
18 Jan 2007
A good model might be that of the Popular Front of the 30s and 40s, in which a spectrum of political groups were able to work together on those issues they agreed upon -- for example, to fight World War 2.
There are many more potential allies than those now considered "progressive." For example, in the UK, the Tories are taking some very green positions, putting pressure on Blair and Labor.
Or in California, Republican governor Schwarzenegger is bucking the neo-cons, with a fairly green agenda.
I monitor papers and statements coming from the military, and at least some sectors are suprisingly aware of fuel and environmental issues. Same with the intelligence community, I would suspect.
One thing to keep in mind is that current direction of the Republican Party is an aberration - much more extreme and polarizing than traditional Republicans. In the 60s and 70s, Republicans often were involved in environmental causes.
Caroline Casey (the Visionary Activist) emphasizes the importance of learning how to be a good ally. We've got to re-discover that skill.
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David Roberts Posted 9:12 am
18 Jan 2007
It's worth noting that some of these other issues -- economic justice, public financing of elections, health, etc. -- are not just nice allies for environmentalism, but really elements and/or prerequisites of it. I'm a bit of an Aristotelean unity-of-the-virtues type -- I think we get a healthier society or a sicker one, and "issues" involved in making it healthier are not necessarily easy to separate out in practice. Our issues overlap more than the siloed nature of our advocacy groups would indicate.
www.grist.org
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bookerly Posted 10:52 am
18 Jan 2007
Let me join the chorus of praise and concordance.
But instead of saying a "left" cause, you might insist that the "left" is the new center.
patrick
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Mike B Posted 1:07 pm
18 Jan 2007
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.
These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
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caniscandida Posted 9:54 pm
18 Jan 2007
<<
Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
>>
Bravo! Francis MacDonald Cornford, great scholar of ancient Greek philosophy, said somewhere that even as we think less of Plato and Aristotle for accepting slavery as a necessary fact of life (and he might have included some New Testament authors as well), so future generations will think less of us, for not resisting the conventional idea that a person's livelihood should depend on working for a wage.
Agreeing with Gar, our David Roberts wrote, "It's worth noting that some of these other issues -- economic justice, public financing of elections, health, etc. -- are not just nice allies for environmentalism, but really elements and/or prerequisites of it."
It is interesting that David, ever following the money, a large part of Gar's concern, to be sure, yet has nothing to say about the important social-justice issues that Gar also emphasizes.
Also, we might ask: Is the "unity of the virtues" approach, the idea that environmentalism has "elements or prerequisites" that are not immediately obvious to many environmentalists, so very magnanimous, in the best Aristotelian sense, that it might also include a committed concern for animal welfare? Jason Scorse's notoriously ugly style in forcing that issue won no friends; nor did it deserve to. But that cause does indeed have more attractive spokespersons.
It is curious that Gar ends by asking, "Should we network with these primarily, or should we not also network with those?" I have no problem with politicking, schmoozing, lunching, happy-hour-ing, looking for a majority, discovering common interests, discovering how we possess "elements or perquisites" of one another.
But who are "we"? Gar seems to be addressing a readership of self-identifying environmentalists, with environmentalism representing their primary set of values. But is that realistic? How many readers of Gristmill are really like that? Do we not have all kinds of other concerns and values as well?
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Gar Lipow Posted 12:34 am
19 Jan 2007
Grist is an environmental magazine. A great many prominent figures are calling for people to drop everything else and concentrate mainly on global warming to the exclusion of other issues. The readers of Grist are likely to encounter that viewpoint - within Grist itself if nowhere else. So I think it important to confront that particular viewpoint.
>revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system.
I'll agree that class is the undiscussed elephant in the living room in American politics, and that since I implicitly brought it up, I should have discussed it explicitly. Don't think 19th century rhetoric is the best way to present it, especially 19th century rhetoric about a revolution that is not going to happen in the U.S. anytime in the forseeable future.
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SMLowry Posted 1:20 am
19 Jan 2007
As I've pointed out elsewhere, grassroots movements need funding, lots of it to succeed. Funding comes from wealthy people or foundations supported by wealthy people. In my experience, it is extremely difficult to raise substantial money for grassroots efforts. Instead they are supposed to be supported by volunteers, underpaid staff, local donations, and prayers. The big money goes to the big groups tackling sexy issues in splashy, public ways (the most bang for the buck). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt things have changed all that much since my non-profit days in Vermont a few years ago. Oh, we also had several trust-fund "babies" who could afford to work without pay. The culture was like this: If you need to earn a salary then you need to get a "real" job, not expect your nonprofit work to support you. Since I was seriously committed to the work I was doing while raising 3 boys alone, I was often on the receiving end of such comments, despite the overwhelming opinion of my colleagues that the work I was doing was necessary and valuable. Yes, it was frustrating and yes it often pissed me off. I also ran into situations where if I had been a single mom of color I would have qualified for financial assistance to present my work at conferences, events that I was actually invited to because my work was considered so "valuable". But since I am not a woman of color the assumption was that I could raise the money myself or somehow have it magically appear in my (non-existant) bank account. So yes, there was a real understanding of the economic plight of people, especially women, of color in environmental circles but not the class issue which impacts every race to some extent. I didn't make an issue of it because I didn't want to be labeled "racist" by some of my white-so politically-correct colleagues, and as luck would have it family circumstances demanded that I pack my bags, and my kids, and move to Maine to take care of my disabled sister. I have no idea how things would have eventually worked out had I remained an activist in Vermont.
Now, dealing with the very real danger of climate change I see the same thing happening. Once we get beyond replacing light bulbs and curbing consumption we need to begin the real work of lifestyle transformation. And this does take money, at the community and at the individual/family levels. We need to public transportation where none exists (like where I live), and where it does exist it probably needs to be expanded. We need to seriously retrofit our homes and businesses which takes money. Not just tax breaks because if you don't earn enough to pay taxes then they don't help much. Incentives that benefit higher income and wealthy people don't have any impact on those of us at the lower end of the income ladder. And proposals for increased taxes on fossil fuels or carbon taxes, if they are applied equally across the board, will seriously hurt lower income people and people living on fixed incomes who are already paying a higher percentage of their income on energy.
I'm in the process of trying to figure out what changes I can make in my two-person household that will make us part of the solution and not a lesser part of the problem. My dream would be to move to some kind of community where we shared things like cars, plows, washers/dryers, gardening, splitting wood and other labor, but not a community that tells me how I have to live, what I can and can't eat, what my spiritual beliefs should be, etc. Co-housing would be close to ideal except for the fact that it seems one needs to be quite wealthy to buy into it. No way is my house worth what I'd need to get for it to move into any of the co-housing projects I've researched thus far. So I'm continuing to research and I'm hoping that in the next two to three years I've found an answer my sister and I (and the Earth) can live with. I have to believe that if environmentalists took on issues relating to class my search would be more successful.
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caniscandida Posted 2:19 am
19 Jan 2007
Amen!!!
SMLowry's story -- really, just an episode from her larger story -- is, to no one's surprise, powerful and engaging. She clearly has lived enough, to start working on Volume One of her memoirs. : )
Is John Edwards the only presidential candidate talking about class, right now?
Of course, there are a few Representatives who have dedicated themselves to that issue, e.g. Charles Rangel, and Barney Frank. And in the Senate, Edward Kennedy touches on it from time to time.
Has anyone read Barbara Ehrenreich's brutally depressing "Nickel and Dimed" as an environmentalist text?
How about this as a platform plank, both pro-environment and anti-class-inequality: Every municipality (or however you want to designate a district) must work to ensure that there is affordable housing for all residents; and every municipality must work to ensure that there is made available regular, convenient, affordable public transit, between places of residence and places of commerce/business/industry.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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amazingdrx Posted 3:18 am
19 Jan 2007
Reform has marched state by state onto the federal scene down through uS history. Anti-slavery, women's suffrage, minimum wage most recently, now healthcare.
Next comes renewables used efficiently.
Impelled by utilities paying homeowners, farmers, and small businesses for renewable power and government diverting subsidies from big energy companies to investors in plugin vehicles,solar, wind, and biogas systems and conservation.
Get a coalition like the minimum wage activists did. Get a referendum on each state ballot. Might convince politicians that renewable energy reform would be a good campaign issue.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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kmp Posted 6:33 am
19 Jan 2007
I suppose it would be more difficult in urban areas, but I don't necessarily agree with "one size fits all" programs anyway.
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BTStrategies Posted 12:22 pm
19 Jan 2007
We have heard his plan for Iraq. Let's try to influence his plan on the environment by gathering 500,000 signatures stating that we want America to invest in renewable energy and address climate change - NOW.
Please sign the petition and send it to your friends.
http://action.sierraclub.org/get_serious
We have one week to be heard! Thanks!
Charles
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LegumeSam Posted 4:00 pm
19 Jan 2007
The history of capitalism is a history of "capitalist discipline," of the spreading of forces of commodification, marketization, and alienation into the deepest recesses of nature. Since capitalism, at this point, has gotten into the DNA itself (via genetic engineering), it has become like a cancer that is metastasized. The spread of "capitalist discipline," then, has a rather limited longevity. Don't count on the system surviving into the long term.
The scariest aspect of this all, however, is that the intelligentsia, the folks who have studied all of this and who should know better, still imagine that American society will change very little over the coming decades. In real life, however, we can expect something like the disaster that hit New Orleans to spread across America as global warming deepens, while the real estate market in several American cities teeters on the edge of collapse and the position of the US dollar in world currency markets grows increasingly shaky as US aggregate debt balloons out of sight. Our "Argentina moment" rushes at us, though our intelligentsia appears rather unprepared to seize it.
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
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spaceshaper Posted 10:44 pm
19 Jan 2007
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spaceshaper Posted 11:13 pm
19 Jan 2007
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Mike B Posted 9:14 pm
20 Jan 2007
Is living in harmony with the Earth possible within a system which commodifies everything, including the Earth?
Won't it be too long to wait, if we have to come up with schemes which will appeal to "cost-efficiency" logic?
The relentless drive to make all human creations and Nature into saleable objects is incompatible with human survival at this stage of historical development. We either face that reality or we gradually grind our way to barbarism as the chaos of global warming envelops us.
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