A column by Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post has conservatives all a-twitter -- appropriate, I guess, since it gathers all the state-of-the-art conservative talking points on global warming in one place.
Browse around at reactions and the impression you will get above all is that conservatives just don't take the subject very seriously. They're looking for some clever arguments so they can move onto other stuff that gets their viscera churning (terrorism, evil liberals, etc.). This headline is typical: "WaPo: Global Warming a Bunch of Bull."
Of course, that's not what the column says at all. What the column says is that we can't really do anything about global warming, and any politician who says otherwise is a hypocrite. It advocates despair and surrender.
There are two primary points in the column, and one conclusion that follows from the two points. Let's take them in order.
The first point is implicit. Samuelson says that even if developed countries cut their emissions, developing countries never will (thus, rising global CO2 is inevitable). Why? Because they want to grow and solve their own problems (poverty, etc.). In other words, fossil fuel use and rising GHG emissions are intrinsic to economic growth. This is absolutely central to conservative reaction to global warming; it's why they view efforts to fight global warming as attacks on capitalism and economic growth.
But of course, as China, for instance, has already figured out, developing along the fossil-fuel-heavy Western path will mean sure destruction.
The second point is spelled out:
... global warming is an iffy proposition. Yes, it's happening; but, no, we don't know the consequences -- how much warming will occur, what the effects (good or bad) will be or where. ... Global warming is not an automatic doomsday. In some regions, warmer weather may be a boon.
There's fuzzy language here, leaving the impression that for all we know, global warming will be a wash -- some places will be nicer, others won't. It's true, of course, that global warming is not an "automatic doomsday." The high end of projected temperature increases (~5.8° C by 2100) would be catastrophic: widespread drought, floods, sea-level rises, possible sudden, nonlinear changes, etc. People might survive this, but no region will consider it a "boon" when the global economy tanks.
The low-end of changes (~1.4° C by 2100) would still bring worse storms, flood, droughts, and spread of disease, with all the concomitant effects on our economy and health. Over the past few decades we've experienced a half-degree rise, and just this last week we find that the oceans are acidifying and wildfires are increasing. It's already costing us. It's possible that three times that much warming would work out OK, but do we really want to take that bet?
And finally, here's Samuelson's real conclusion:
... improved technology is the only practical way of curbing greenhouse gases. ... Any technology solution would probably involve some acceptable form of nuclear power or an economic way of removing CO2 from burned fossil fuels. "Renewable" energy (wind, solar, biomass) won't suffice. Without technology gains, adapting to global warming makes more sense than trying to prevent it. Either way, the Bush administration rightly emphasizes research and development.
This is actually a whole string of unsupported truisms -- renewables are dismissed as unrealistic while "acceptable" nuclear power and carbon sequestration are assumed viable -- but the overall message to the voting public is: just sit back and wait. Something will come up. Bush is researching things. Everything's taken care of. Go back to sleep.
As ThinkProgress points out, even the IEA report Samuelson pulls his data from disagrees:
[B]y employing technologies that already exist or are under development, the world could be brought onto a much more sustainable energy path. The scenarios show how energy-related C02 emissions can be returned to their current levels by 2050.
Conservatives see the approach of global warming and counsel passivity and despair. We can do better than that, can't we?
Comments
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LegumeSam Posted 4:49 pm
06 Jul 2006
Well, I really don't think "conservatives" are passive. Rather, their corporate overlords are actively "out there" exploiting the world's last cheap resources, ripping down the rainforests for saleable tropical woods, pumping the Earth dry of its last drops of cheap oil, and patrolling the continents, waiting for the next Hugo Chavez-type uppity regime to sprout from the impoverished masses in their slums so that it can be crushed. The Right wins elections in Mexico and Peru and the "conservatives" breathe a sigh of relief. Bolivia elects Morales, and they panic. Hey, those are "our" "resources" they're nationalizing! Capitalism of the type "conservatives" favor is characterized by the Wild Frontier mentality, and it will only come to a halt when Garrett Hardin's tragedy of the commons becomes a reality. Who is George Bush if not a Wild West cowboy? In sum, I don't expect harmony with nature from them.
Oh, sure, I suppose we can stop them for a little while with the standard prescription of mainstream "progressivism." That may take awhile to come into being; The politicos in Washington, Demopublican or Republicrat, today all pretty much believe in the "Washington Consensus," which is a prescription for "free markets" everywhere on Earth. The "Washington Consensus" is of course a cover under which big producers drive out small ones, and advance the prospects of a transnational capitalist class despite the slowing of the global economic growth rate. And since the "progressives" are almost all either Democrats or belong to no party, we can hardly expect anything different from them.
Imagine, if you will, convention hall after convention hall stretching to the horizons, filled with "progressives" in an eternal Boston, in a year 2004 frozen in time, all listening silently while a billion suited John Kerrys spout pro-war rhetoric unto eternity. You scream as loud as you can to wake yourself from this horrid nightmare, but your voice has been restricted to the convention-approved "free speech zone" conveniently located under a bridge miles away from the convention halls. It would make a great horror movie if it weren't so real.
I read some vague remarks here about how the "Third World" was experiencing "economic prosperity." All classes, everywhere? What about Latin America, which over the '80s and '90s experienced a sum-total growth rate of 7%? Or Africa, which has actually regressed? The statistics I've been reading characterize the period between 1948 and 1973 as having the fastest (capitalist) overall global economic growth rate in all history. That isn't coming back. And the global poor? They're still starving. If you don't think so, well, the time to show your hard evidence is now.
But I digress. Let's take a look at that standard prescription of mainstream "progressivism," again. Isn't our mentality basically one of "creating alliances"? I read something about that here. I believe the same commentator chimed in when I mentioned Gramsci's concept of a "war of position." Well, here's the reality: the "alliances" the mainstream "progressives" have made have all led to entanglements with the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party is led by people who believe in the "Washington Consensus," which is basically a formula for rule by conservatives. The "war of position," then, has been sold out to these "alliances" we've made, and basically been lost through them. Mainstream politics has become a bait-and-switch operation at best. To get anywhere within the system, one must win lots of elections; and to win even one puny election, one must raise loads of corporate cash, making promises to donors and sacrificing the ability to effect political change in the process. The game is reinforced by the Two-Party System, which draws the nonpartisan organizations into its web of "necessary alliances" and denies them any meaningful opportunity to do politics outside its twin orbits. Liberal Democrats have no right to discuss Gramsci without admitting a prior condition of defeat.
What's more, this defeat appears to be affecting the "progressives'" ability to project possible solutions onto the problem at hand. Samuelson may be a conservative; but his approach to global warming is a microcosm of the problem facing "progressives." In each of their prognoses you see dire warnings of the future state of the world, and milk-and-water "solutions" that seem to be addressed more to the reader's fear of change than to anything else. A book I previously cited, Patrick Hossay's Unsustainable, seems to be written in this vein.
But there's hope! Let's imagine, for instance, that some sort of global climactic catastrophe effects a mood-change among the elites (who so far have been propping the Bush regime up). Let's imagine, furthermore, that they spontaneously decide to embark upon a new compromise, altering their "Washington Consensus" principles slightly to offer the world an eco-friendly face. (Never mind that the last great economic compromise, the one that pulled populist Keynesian economics out of the Great Depression of the '30s, took nine years to bring into being.)
What happens at that point? Will the environmental community be too desperate to declare victory in an environment which, until then, has been unremittingly hostile (or noncommittal) to their cause? Will we celebrate some puny 4% reduction in "greenhouse gas emissions," forgetting that our "victory" was probably all the current system could take without dramatic restructuring? What I'm trying to show with these questions is that the "environmental problem" is really a problem in political economy, a problem our current system hasn't solved. Solutions will not only require new rethinking, but furthermore a reckoning of how our current "new rethinking" is entangled in the current realities of political economy.
Part of this entanglement, I'm ashamed to say, rests secure in the false "hope" that the problem of the "Washington Consensus" can be wished away through technology. So far, nobody here has bothered to refute John Bellamy Foster's thesis: solutions based on faith in the healing powers of "technology" do not stop the capitalist system from using the old, destructive technologies; in fact, they simply enhance the system's ability to use all technologies. Simply because we recognize that fossil-fuel-burning is destructive, doesn't mean that the will-power to stop using fossil fuels will magically appear in our souls. Rather, under the current regime of political economy, our souls have made a prior commitment to budgetary economics, which, in this era, amounts to a world that uses 85 million barrels of oil every day, not to mention all the coal/ natural gas/ tar sands which I don't have figures on. Energy alternatives abound; show me one that can provide me with the same energy that humanity now gets from 85 million daily barrels of oil, and just as cheaply too, and I'll admit to the longevity of capitalist energy use.
I really loved the Samuelson arguments about "we don't know" and "some places will be nicer." In 1945, mind you, "we didn't know" what would happen if the Bomb were to be dropped on urban populations; that didn't justify it. And the elites, I'm sure, dream of palatial estates along the newly-tropical Arctic Ocean coasts of Siberia, Alaska, and Canada, complete with sex on the beach during those glorious 24-hour late June days. For those of us who won't be able to move there without permission from the Department of Homeland Security, life will be nasty, brutish, and short. We whose names will not be in the Social Register will need to take stock in a regime which aims, not for some "more sustainable" (yet catastrophe-bound) capitalist regime, but for something that is genuinely sustainable.
This means, in the words of Joel Kovel and Enrique Leff, a regime based on "ecological production," where the principles of permaculture (creatively adapted to all fields of endeavor) are applied to all aspects of production. It doesn't mean trying to change the subject to "capitalism" or "America" or "localism" or "consumer lifestyles" or "sustainable development." A global sustainable society will have to be the first priority; comparatively, all else will have to be thrown in the basket marked "gossip."
This will not mean the reduction of the human being to mere "population," to be manipulated by scientific eco-puppet masters; rather, the creative juices of every human being on the planet will be necessary to solve the ecological problem. Thus ecosocialism; humanity solving its ecological problem communally, and not merely as representatives of the various social classes, nations, races, genders, or individual egos. I respect your right to live on the planet; you respect mine, and we co-operate to save each other amidst the wreckage of the system that came before.
A complete bibliography of ecosocialism will be forthcoming. However, I would like to recommend, firstly, that everyone start by reading Joel Kovel's The Enemy of Nature. This is really the capstone book of ecosocialism. Also important are Maria Mies (The Subsistence Perspective) and her husband Saral Sarkar (Eco-socialism or eco-capitalism). An ecosocialist's view of the other movements, a very polite one, can be found in Derek Wall's Babylon and Beyond. A short view of the dilemma posed above can be found in Foster's article Organizing Ecological Revolution.
Critiques of capitalism: the simplest of these can be found in Harry Shutt's The Trouble With Capitalism, although that book is mainly focused upon explaining how neoliberalism got to be as it is today. The essential theory can be found in volume 1 of Marx's Capital, although Marx needs a modern interpreter to make sense to most readers. Kees van der Pijl's Transnational Classes and International Relations lays out the whole history of capitalism, complete with its disastrous eco-future. It is very abstract, however. Leslie Sklair's The Transnational Capitalist Class is very ecologically conscious, though it focuses mainly upon the development of corporate business.
Social change: I have already recommended Gramsci's Prison Notebooks; we should all study and critique Alinsky's Rules for Radicals; and of course we should read Skinner's Walden Two and Hilke Kuhlmann's Living Walden Two to look at some models for alternative life. (Kovel, of course, was interested in the Bruderhof, which I know nothing about.)
That's all for now. Back to work!
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
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caniscandida Posted 6:52 pm
06 Jul 2006
But I would be interested in seeing a catalogue of alleged advantages resulting from global warming.
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bookerly Posted 9:30 pm
06 Jul 2006
I think by now we can see the general tenor of the establishment attack on Global Warming (which is to attack the idea, not the problem!).
David sums it up nicely "the overall message to the voting public is: just sit back and wait. Something will come up. Bush is researching things. Everything's taken care of. Go back to sleep."
The question is, can we put together an alternative message that is truthful and positive, and then communicate it effectively?
We can see there will be no honest coverage by the MSM.
patrick
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