Common ownership: Our last chance (2006)

From Issue 20 of the World Socialist Review

A recent episode of the PBS program Now, broadcast nationwide in most states on 4/22/2005, announced gravely not only that “scientists are convinced our Earth is warming, and with scary consequences,” but also and even more gravely that “meanwhile industry funds a campaign to do nothing.” The program quoted Dr. Richard Alley, professor at Penn State University, a paleo-climatologist, one who studies the Earth utilizing data from glacier ice and ice sheets. According to Dr. Alley, our planet has on numerous occasions previously experienced a phenomenon known as “abrupt climate change.” His concern, and that of scientists whom the program referred to as “the best minds on the planet,” is that human society is so altering the atmosphere and the climate that it may trigger such an abrupt, indeed possibly catastrophic, transformation of the climate.

A visit to the "Web site of the environmental think-tank EcoBridge lists hefty references suggesting indisputable recent changes in our atmosphere, including increases in carbon dioxide and methane, more frequent extreme weather, disappearing glaciers, melting arctic sea ice, Greenland’s ice sheet melting, tropical diseases spreading, and oceans warming with accompanying coral bleaching and disintegration. Paralleling such dire developments are other examples of human society’s significant transformation of the planet from its condition even a century ago, including enormous deforestation rates (discussed in impressive detail in the article “Destroying the World’s Forests” on the Web site of the World Socialist Movement [WSM]) and the introduction of vast quantities of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that are contributing to ozone layer depletion (also discussed on the WSM Web site in an article entitled “Profit Enhancing Chemicals”). Vast research-based evidence thus appeared to support the hypothesis that the planet is warming and becoming increasingly less hospitable for humans and other animal fife.

Does the future have a future?

What is presumably of greatest concern to those of us who work for a living is the total lack of apparent control that we may exert at present upon the corporations, media and governments whose practices exist to serve the interests of a small percentage of the population. The great historical question is going to be: are we just going to stand around amidst alternating storms of doomsday prophecies and media coverage minimizing the magnitude of the problem, and not take matters into our own hands, even at the risk that our and our children’s future may be horrendously bleak, even non-existent?

For example, according to the above mentioned Now television show, in Congress the House has just approved an energy bill which promises tax breaks and subsidies to coal, oil, and gas companies — the companies most responsible for the mess in the first place! Furthermore, those most opposed to theories of global warming are those such as Senator Inhofe who represent the economic interests of the magnates of his oil-producing Oklahoma. He is ironically the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and the Committee’s biggest recipient of contributions from oil and gas companies. He says global warming is a hoax.

Ross Gelbspan, a former editor of the Boston Globe, was described in the Now program as having devoted many years to reporting the ways in which the energy industry has attempted to cover up the scientific warnings about global warming. For example, in 1989 the disinformation campaign began when representatives of the petroleum, automotive and other industries formed the Global Climate Coalition, and later the Information Council on the Environment, which was funded by the Western Fuels Association, mostly representing coal interests. The strategy for that campaign, according to Mr. Gelbspan, suggested their drawing on several prominent global warming skeptics, scientists who argue that global warming is mired in unknowns. Mr. Gelbspan found that energy industry leaders had paid those scientists hefty fees and compensations amounting to more than half a million dollars between 1991 and 1995. Some of these scientists, who had engaged the media in interviews to suggest global warming was an unsupported theory rather than a strongly supported hypothesis, reemerged some years later in videos distributed by yet another group, the Greening Earth Society, a group also supported by the coal industry.

In 1997 the Global Climate Coalition appeared in a multimillion dollar campaign to persuade the public that the science behind the international Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse gases was shaky. One of those ads stated: “Countries responsible for almost half the world’s emissions won’t have to cut back. Check it out for yourself, it’s not global and it won’t work.” Then President George Bush, former oil man himself, pulled the U.S. out of the Kyoto Treaty, claiming that “the targets themselves were arbitrary and not based upon science.” According to the Now program, a 2001 memo by Frank Luntz, a well-known Republican consultant, may have played its part in affecting Mr. Bush’s decision, when it advised the White House that the best way to “address the global warming” problem is to “continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”

The May/June 2005 edition of Mother Jones suggested that Exxon Mobil alone contributes to more than 40 policy groups that seek to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.

Welcome to Hell

According to a citation in a January 13, 2000 CNN Web site article about scientific experts discussing the overwhelmingly strong evidence for global warming, a conference of the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) comprising over 2,500 scientists, was quoted as having reached a near-unanimous conclusion that global warming was at least partially the result of human activity — primarily the burning of fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide, methane, and others gases into the atmosphere, forming a global “blanket” that traps heat near the Earths surface. The IPCC predicted an increase in global temperatures of between 2 and 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. The panel also predicted the expansion of warming oceans and calculated that the melting of land-based ice formations would combine to add between one and three feet to the existing sea level. The IPCC projected sharp increases in the frequency and intensity of storms and droughts, in the spread of tropical diseases, in coastal flooding and in accelerated waves of extinctions of plant and animal species which fail to adapt to the changing climate.

As suggested earlier in this article, large countries such as the United States may choose to put profits before people in refusing to cooperate with Kyoto Accord limits to greenhouse gas emissions, while other developing nations such as China, a coal-based economy, are likely to vastly surpass the greenhouse emissions of the United States by 2025.

Such is the anarchic nature of the capitalist system. It is comprised in part of vast corporations with vested economic interests to broadcast disinformation to the public and to influence governments to steer policy away from potential threats not to our well-being but to their profit-making. It is also made up of rival nation-states each attempting to care for the economic interests of their own internal capitalist class. Finally, it is characterized by billions of workers whose receipt of information is heavily influenced by the capitalist media over which they have no control.

In other words, even rational decisions by governments, such as those pronounced in the Kyoto Accords, may be thwarted and never realized because of the needs of the few rather than the needs of us many. While some or even many capitalists predictable phenomenon not caused by the negative side effects of industrial society, humans may still need to find a solution to keep themselves and future generations from destruction in droughts, floods, or plagues.

Such complex solutions are not likely to be effectively realized in an intrinsically competitive and undemocratic society, in which the resources we will desperately require are owned by the planets private owners or by rival nation-states. In such a preliminary social order as we presently live under, the economic costs of dollars and cents will likely play a major part of any such grandiose scheme, as there is only so much money to go around. Furthermore, in this hierarchical, class-based society, the major decisions will be made by those with power and privilege, and not by those of us who must work to live and who remain relatively powerless players in the machinations of national or global politics.

Good Decisions Will Require Common Ownership

Or we could decide to take matters into our own hands. By democratically taking over the means of production, to be thereafter considered subject to the common ownership of the whole human species, any drastic solutions that may need to be made by and in the interest of even the entire human race could more readily be achieved, as decision-making over the use of resources will be entirely ours. Whatever we decide, such decisions will be made in harmony with the findings of the scientific community, and we will be able to act upon our decisions immediately, without the endless walls of bureaucracy, finance, politics or power murderously standing in the way of our lives as they are at present with regards to an issue such as global warming that could potentially alter the course of human history.

At what point do humans decide that sustaining the interests of a small gang of owners — whom working-class humans have thus far decided have every right to own the planet and enjoy the fruits and luxuries that workers provide — is not worth the imminent threat of an Earth no longer able to sustain human fife? Scientists are warning us that the point of no return is close by or has already been passed. Do we pretend the problem is not really that bad? Do we passively resign ourselves to a pessimism that announces it is too late to act so why not just embrace a selfish consumerist individualism? Do we continue to trust our politicians to represent our interests even though they have always failed to do so since they are unable to alter and control the laws of the capitalist economy in the interests of us hard working folk?

The barrel of the gun is pointed right now between your eyes. What are you going to do?

— Dr. Who

Global warming – what is it? (2007)

From the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Global warming is an increase in mean global temperature, which is an average of temperatures taken in various parts of the world at near surface level on land and sea. It’s now about 14.6º Celsius (about 58º in old money). On a mild December day in Britain it could be more or less that temperature outside. But of course this is a pure coincidence. In most other parts of the world the temperature today will have been quite different. That’s because it’s an average. Actually, the absolute figure is pretty meaningless, which is why commentators generally fix a base year and compare changes since that year.

More or less reliable statistics have existed only since 1880 and these show that the average global temperature in 2000 was 0.5ºC higher than in 1900. But this was not a continuous rise. It rose from the 1900s to 1940s, then fell in the 1950s and 1960s, and has been rising since the 1970s. The average temperature in the 70s was 14.01. Today it’s about 14.6, a rise of 0.6º. So, while it is not accurate to say (as some do) that temperatures have been rising since 1900 or since the industrial revolution, the world does seem to be currently warming – even though a century, let alone a few decades is the equivalent of a second in geological time over which changes in global temperatures (Ice Ages and Warm Periods) are measured.

Changes in the Earth’s temperature also mean changes in the Earth’s climate or, rather, since there’s no such thing as a single Earth climate, in the climates of the different parts of the world. When the Earth warms up this means, for instance, that the polar ice caps decrease in size and that glaciers everywhere retreat. Which is happening now.

So, it can be accepted that we are living in a period when the Earth is warming at least temporarily and that this is resulting in climate change.

The big question is: what is causing this? We know that in the past the Earth has warmed and cooled and that this has been due to natural phenomena such as volcanic activity, changes in the intensity of solar radiation or changes in the Earth’s tilt towards the Sun or its orbit round the Sun. Some scientists are suggesting that this is the case now, that the Earth is just warming up after the “Little Ice Age” that lasted from 1500 to 1850 and which may partly have been caused by a reduction in solar radiation.

But the majority of scientists take the view, to quote from a recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which groups hundreds of scientists, specialists in their field, from all over the world:

“Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations”.

Burning fossil fuels releases the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), into the atmosphere. CO2 is called a greenhouse gas because, though it does not prevent heat from the Sun reaching the Earth, it prevents some of it from radiating back. Which is a good thing actually, since we need this. Without any greenhouse gases in the atmosphere the average world temperature would be minus 18C.

At the time of the industrial revolution and for thousands of years before the average amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been estimated as about 280 parts per million or ppm (in other words, out of every million molecules in the air 280 were CO2, not much: 0.00028%). In 1958 when this was first measured (as opposed to estimated from other data) it was 315. In 2000 it was 367. Today it is near 380 – and rising. A word of caution is in order here. CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. There are others, especially methane (which is a product of agriculture). Total greenhouse gas presence in the atmosphere is measured in terms of CO2 equivalent. Today this is about 430 ppm. And this is the figure that is generally referred to in discussions on the subject. It’s as well to be aware that when this figure is quoted not all of it is made up of CO2, but is a figure for all greenhouse gases. CO2 equivalent is about 15 percent higher than the figure for CO2 alone.

Socialists are not scientists so all we can do is to exercise critical thinking while taking into account what the majority of scientists in the field have concluded, knowing that they could be wrong.

The majority of scientists in the fields involved have concluded that the undeniable rise in average global temperatures has been caused since at least the 1970s by the rise in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels. In other words, that it is man-made or “anthropogenic” as they put it in their language.

What is not clear – scientists are still arguing about it – is what precise temperature rise is caused by the emission of a given extra amount of CO2. This of course is a key ratio since more and more CO2 is being released into the atmosphere by the continued burning of coal, oil and gas.

If you assume the “climate sensibility” of CO2 to be low, then the rise in average global temperature at particular levels will be low. If you consider its “climate sensibility” to be high, then by 2100 the rise could be 2, 3 or 4ºC. A 3 or 4º rise could cause huge problems: sea levels rising by a third to a half a metre (one or two feet), more stormy weather, more forest fires, more droughts and desertification.

So, without necessarily subscribing to the higher figures put forward by the more engaged scientists, it can be accepted that it is desirable to cut back on CO2 emissions. The question we look at in this issue is how likely is this to happen under capitalism given its competitive and anarchic nature?

Pathfinders: Nuclear Con-Fusion (2005)

The Pathfinders Column from the December 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Few situations demonstrate the reactive nature of central government better than the energy question. Faced with a popular tide of opposition to new nuclear build on the one hand, and the utter impossibility of meeting the 40% energy shortfall expected in the next two decades with renewables, it’s easy to see why Blair’s government is desperate to keep treading the fine wire of non-commitment. When in doubt, do and say nothing, and maybe tomorrow the situation will change. 

It wasn’t always so. Nuclear fission energy was once the Philosopher’s Stone of science that was to herald a brave new world of clean and efficient energy for all time. But the optimism didn’t last long, and in the wake of Windscale 1957, the Silkwood affair, and later Three Mile Island and, catastrophically, Chernobyl, the public infatuation with this futuristic technology was well and truly over. Nowadays the questions they should have asked back in the 50’s come easily to the lips of the general public – who says it’s safe, who says it’s cheap, and what about the waste?

But western capitalism is in a bit of a fix, because, quite apart from any fluffy consideration of fossil fuel emissions and the ozone layer, the real issue is that the remaining deposits of oil, coal and gas are largely under the control of Russia and China. Solar, wind and wave energy contribute only a tiny fraction of the national grid and never look likely to manage more than 20 per cent even in the government’s wildest fantasies.

Some excitement has been generated recently over the decision to start building the ITER nuclear fusion reactor at Caderache in Southern France, something of a coup for the EU and one in the eye for Japan, who has been arm-wrestling for the right to host this plant for years. Fusion, it ought to be pointed out, has made some progress in recent years. Gone are the days when  it consumed vastly more energy than it produced – the new larger reactors have seen to that. And it’s remarkably clean and efficient. Instead of burning fossil fuels and releasing their stored electromagnetic energy, you fuse heavy hydrogen isotopes together and in the process unleash the vastly more powerful force that holds protons and neutrons together – about 10 million times more powerful. Best of all, the main waste product is helium, which is useful for balloons, airships and at staff Xmas parties for giving the managers squeaky voices, but is otherwise a non-toxic, inert element.

So what’s the catch? The ITER plant is not even a prototype reactor, it is a pre-prototype, designed to test whether the materials and construction can stand up to the sun-like 100 million degrees centigrade necessary for nuclear fusion to occur. Nobody knows if the material can take it, and until they do, nobody would dare build a real reactor. So we could still be looking at fifty years before fusion is contributing anything to the national grid. So, in the meantime, it could be back to good old filthy fission.

What is, for a socialist, strange to the point of comical in all this, is that in all the energetic debate about the pending energy crisis, when all the ageing reactors are closed down and there’s nothing to replace them with, nobody, not one politician, or media pundit, or social commentator, ever suggests that we just take a forty per cent drop in energy consumption and live with it. How can we continue to live the nightmare life of the motorway commuter without petrol? Oh no, we can’t possibly give that up, we’ll have to use hydrogen. How do we continue to have all our cities’ department stores lit up every night like Christmas trees so people can window-shop at 4 am? Dread thought that consumers should have their nocturnal browsing habits constrained, we need to develop fusion technology. How do we keep selling the public more and more energy? Simple, we persuade them to live in ‘smart’ houses where even the tin-opener discusses Kant.

Capitalism is not, of course, really interested in saving energy. Energy companies could offer customer discounts to those who were frugal, but in fact that’s not the way to make money. Some years ago a group called CORE (Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment) demonstrated that it was possible to provide cavity-wall and loft insulation for every house in England and Wales for less than the cost of one nuclear power station, and at a net energy saving greater than that produced by the same nuclear power station. So saving energy is not the point, using as much as possible in as profligate a way as possible is where the money is at, which fact demonstrates, as few situations can do better, the reactive nature of capitalism and the inability of common sense to prevail where the cash incentive is concerned.

Paddy Shannon

Driving to distraction (2023)

From the November 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Proposing the radical alternative to capitalism is hindered in part by being unable to present a detailed vision of what socialism will look like. The broad features are clear. A truly democratic worldwide, moneyless society base on the principle of meeting everyone’s self-determined needs.

This projected society is contrasted with the present in which profit is the motivation for production and also its limitation: no profit, no production, without any consideration as to what people require. The productive process being in the ownership and control of the miniscule minority means the vast majority are dependent for their livelihoods.

They must sell their mental and physical energies for wages and salaries amounting to less than the wealth that labour creates. If it is less than what is needed to buy necessities they must go without. However, not selling is also a disaster for those seeking to harvest the difference between costs and price, the profit.

While production cycles through boom and bust it must be maximised and be as unrelenting as possible. Society has developed to accommodate this, consumerism is the dominant feature. A seeming deluge of new goods and gadgets flood the market. Having the latest . . . whatever’s the must-have.

Freedom has become defined by, and largely limited to, freedom of choice. Products, even the very latest, are often marked by their similarity rather than difference or improvement. Which is why the ‘free’ society has become the wasteful society all too readily disposing of perfectly serviceable items: around 25 million tonnes being thrown into UK skips at recycling and landfill centres.

The motor car has become an exemplar of this problem. From the early 1960s onwards society has been remodelled around it. An icon of that decade is surely the Mini Cooper. Railways were closed down, urban tramways torn up, a motorway system built along with bypasses and new towns planned around roads.

Freedom of the open road was the advertisers’ image, with an implication of individual choice and control. Possessing a car would confer the power to select destinations, who to travel with and when. No more being beholden to timetables.

The difference between the dream and reality was all too quickly realised. Burgeoning car sales favoured the capitalists of the automotive industry to the point that all those newly developed road systems quickly became congested.

Rather than the freedom of the open road there was increasing incarceration in chain gangs of iron cells, inmates fuming with frustration at being rendered near-stationary. Then came a gradual awakening to another profound problem: fossil fuels.

Just forty years or so on from open-road optimism a dramatically changing climate, actual and metaphorical, began to seriously bring into question the practice of continuing to burn oil. That it was unsustainable became ever more apparent, an issue the automotive industry couldn’t ignore or obscure behind advertising propaganda.

When a commodity becomes socially and politically unacceptable then a profitable solution has to be found. Simply ceasing to make that commodity is out of the question. A recent example of this is tobacco. Continuing to kill significant numbers of the population couldn’t be countenanced, especially in the face of informed opposition of health professionals, scientists and the anti-smoking lobby. Cue vaping.

With impressive alacrity the car industry has responded with technological advances, launching electrical vehicles onto the market. Some, hybrids, offered as a compromise, while increasingly all-electric vehicles have made significant commercial progress.

Problem solved! Except, of course, capitalism does not, cannot, solve its own problems, because it is the problem. Profit was, is and will remain the only driving force of capitalism. Social, political and environmental difficulties all ultimately devolve to economics.

An unacceptable commodity cannot simply be forgone, it must be replaced with another commodity. All the better if that commodity also diverts attention away from the root of the problem, the unending absolute requirement to pursue profit.

The electric vehicle superficially appears to circumvent the fossil fuel crisis. A motorist can, with clear conscience, drive away from the fossil fuel red light and go green. Should freedom of choice fail to result in sufficient swapping from oil to electricity then the state can act by decreeing an end to petrol and diesel car production. The Mini Cooper will become all electric and the sixties dream can be recast.

In typical capitalist fashion, though, the solution of one problem becomes the creation of other ones. These are becoming apparent all too readily. In the USA 60 percent of electricity generation is through the burning of fossil fuel. The increasing demand for electricity caused by growing numbers of electric vehicles has merely moved fossil fuel consumption from individual vehicles to power stations.

While there is increasing use of alternative generation in Britain, if every petrol/diesel vehicle presently on the roads is replaced with the electric alternative, how great is that increase going to have to be?

Also, wind turbines are constructed using high-quality steel, a product of a process using fossil fuel. Again there is an element of displacing fossil fuel burning rather than eliminating it.

Then there is the very real problem of the battery. Lithium is the key element here, presently being intensively mined, often in more deprived regions where it is environmentally harmful. Friends of the Earth report that communities are having their water resources jeopardised by lithium mining.

In 2021 the Guardian highlighted workers being paid the equivalent of 30p an hour mining cobalt for use in electric vehicles.

The batteries themselves pose the problem of charging, a very much longer process than filling a petrol tank. Presently there is an inadequate number of charging points. If all cars become electric there will be a requirement for many more charging points than the present number of petrol pumps because of the extra refuelling time.

There are superchargers that cut the charging time, but they reduce battery life by around 80 percent, meaning more mining and having to dispose of increasing numbers of worn out, and very toxic, batteries.

Undoubtedly, over time the technology will improve, but problems won’t disappear. Neither will congestion on already full roads.

As socialism can only be achieved by the action of the working class consciously working through all the difficulties and details that will entail, how life is organised cannot be predetermined. However, it must surely mean a qualitative change to the way life is generally lived, not just a tweaked version of the present, capitalist, society.

People en masse confined to slow- or non-moving traffic jams for ironically named ‘rush hours’ everyday, even in electric vehicles, cannot be a socialist aspiration. As the whole nature of work must radically be transformed by socialism there will be no need for such threats to physical and mental health to be tolerated.

The effects of climate change can at best only be minimally mitigated, if at all, by a mass switching from petrol and diesel to electricity. The automotive industry, though, will continue the propaganda blitz, advertising the freedom enhancing, high-tech status-raising qualities of electric vehicles. Distracting attention from what really drives climate change and society at present, capitalism!

Dave Alton

Voice From The Back: Polluting for profit (2002)

The Voice From The Back Column from the October 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Polluting for profit

The major problems of pollution are caused by the excessive burning of fossil fuels, everyone except the coal and oil lobby agrees. There are alternatives such as wind and solar power; so why aren’t they being developed at the same rate as fossil fuel usage? Simple really. “At present wind power costs between 1.9 and 3.1p a unit, while solar is more than 20p. Conventional generated power sells for between l.1p and 1.3p.” Observer (25 August). Inside a socialist society we won’t be polluting the earth if we have an alternative, but then we would not be producing wealth to make a handful rich but to satisfy human need.

DIY hanging

Clive Fairweather, the outgoing HM Inspector for prisons in Scotland had some figures on suicides in prison that might cheer the “hang-’em, flog-’em” brigade but should chill any compassionate human being. Think of the despair that lies behind a young man taking his own life. Another indictment of the inhumanity of capitalism. “Mr Fairweather told his audience that in the eight years he had been chief inspector of prisons, 170 prisoners had died, yet between 1900 and 1963, only 35 were executed by hanging. 'Bring back hanging? It’s DIY hanging at eight times the rate these days, for our young in prison', he said.” Herald (4 September).

The close circuit society

In the Guardian of 7 September there was a supplement on surveillance in Britain today. It was pretty scary stuff and shows how capitalism is becoming more and more restrictive . “From the moment a worker logs on in the morning to the moment they shut down at night, corporate information *technology departments can watch each and every action they make — which keys they press, which websites they visit, what emails they receive and send . . . Security procedures such as swipe cards on entrances also allow detailed following of employees — if management wants to — of how much time is spent in which parts of a building and, in some workplaces, with cards required for entry to workplace toilets.”

Exporting destruction

As the US and UK leaders claim an attack on Iraq is justified because that country has stocks of “mass destruction weapons” it is worthwhile noting where Iraq was obtaining these weapons from. Surprise, surprise, from the US and the UK. “Reports by the US Senate’s committee on banking, housing and urban affairs — which oversees American export policy — reveal that the US under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr. sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia . . . Classified US Defence Department documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxin, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxin can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.” Sunday Herald (8 September).

The Voice of America?

Ann Coulter, an American journalist and broadcaster has written a book “Slander” containing outrageous right wing views. It is subtitled “Liberal Lies About The American Right” In her column in the National Review she put forward her solution to the Middle East problem, quoted in the Sunday Herald Magazine (8 September): “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” Voice of America?, let’s hope not; though her book does currently top the New York [Times]  bestsellers list.

Oxfam’s solution to famine

Have you ever given money to Oxfam for them to help out by distributing food during some famine? If so, you may well be surprised by the following news item: "British charity Oxfam today launched a 'coffee rescue plan' urging political and business leaders to destroy surplus stocks and guarantee a fair price for farmers" (Guardian, 19 September).

Oxfam's original name was the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief but it later branched out into being a reformist campaigning organisation, working within the context of capitalism. We have always argued that those who set out to reform capitalism end up accepting its logic. This latest episode proves this point up to the hilt. Capitalism periodically produces crises where "too much" food\ has been produced, a crisis of plenty amidst poverty. It solves such crises) not by distributing the plenty to the poor (that would be against its logic and undermine profits), but by destroying the plenty. This has been a classic illustration of the socialist case against capitalism: that it is a system of production for profit rather than to satisfy human needs. Now OXFAM, an organisation set up to try to distribute a bit of the plenty to some of the poor, has come round to the capitalist solution: destroy the food! Remember that next time they shake a collection tin under your nose.

Too little, too late (2008)

From the July 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

That’s the most that will ever be done under capitalism about the problems that global warming may bring.

It’s simply that the way the capitalist system works rules out the effective action at world level that is needed to begin tackling the problem. It even encourages economic activities that contribute to it.

Capitalism is based on production being controlled by profit-seeking enterprises which, supported by governments, compete on the market to buy resources and sell products. This competitive pursuit of profits is the essence of capitalism. It’s what capitalism is all about and what prevents any effective action to deal with climate change.

Fossil fuels

Nobody can deny that global warming is taking place. Nor that, if it continues unchecked, it would have disastrous consequences – such as rising sea-levels and increased desertification – through its effects on the climates of the different parts of the world. There can only be argument over what is causing it. Most scientists in the field take the view that it has mainly been caused by the increase in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere largely as a result of the burning of the fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas.

If this is the case, then one part of any solution has to be cut back on burning these fuels. But this is not happening. In fact, on a world scale, it’s increasing. This is because this is currently the cheapest way of generating the energy to drive industry – and the logic of capitalism compels the profit-seeking enterprises that control production to use the cheapest methods. If they don’t, their competitors will.

There are other sources of energy, in particular hydroelectricity and nuclear power, and the various countries into which the world is divided rely to different degrees on burning fossil fuels. Which means that they would each be affected differently by having to reduce reliance on them. It is this that has prevented, is preventing and will prevent any effective international action to check the burning of coal, oil and gas. The 1997 Kyoto Treaty, which sought rather half-heartedly to do this, was not signed by the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide (the United States) and deliberately excluded the second biggest (China).

These two states – whose rivalry is likely to mark the 21st century – will never agree to limit their burning of fossil fuels and put their enterprises at a competitive disadvantage with regard to enterprises operating from other states less dependent on them. No government of either country could afford to agree to this. And nobody can force them to.

Market forces

There are those who, recognising that governments will never agree to do anything effective, argue that market forces will eventually bring about a decline in burning fossil fuels. Oil is supposed to be running out. As it does market forces will bring about a rise in its price and to alternative methods of generating energy – such as wind power, solar energy and other non-polluting, renewable sources – becoming relatively cheaper. Capitalist enterprises will therefore switch to these other sources. That’s the theory and maybe in the long run it might work. But the long run could be a long time, by when it would be, as we said, too little too late.

But there are arguments about whether oil really is running out and, as its price rises, so it will become profitable to exploit less easily extracted and previously unprofitable sources, such as the oil under the deep sea. Already the states surrounding the Arctic Sea are manoeuvring to be in a good position to exploit the oil underneath it. The same applies to coal, of which everyone agrees there’s enough to last for many centuries. New mines are already being opened in China.

So, within the framework of capitalism, intergovernmental co-operation and leaving it to market forces will both prove to be ineffective. Are we then doomed to suffer the consequences of global warming? Is there then no solution?

The right framework

There will be a solution and, given the right framework, humanity will find it. We already know that any solution will have to involve finding replacement sources of energy to burning of fossil fuels. What is needed is a framework which will allow rather than impede the implementation of this and the other measures. The capitalist system does not, and cannot, provide such a framework. It must go before anything lasting and effective can be done.

What is the alternative framework? First, the competitive struggle for profits as the basis for production must be ended. This requires that the Earth’s natural and industrial resources become the common heritage of all humanity. On this basis, and on this basis alone, can an effective programme to deal with the problem be drawn up and implemented, because production would then be geared to serving human interests and no longer to make a profit for competing enterprises.

There will be those who say that we haven’t the time to wait for the coming into being of this, in their view, unlikely or long-distant framework, and that we must therefore do something now. In this age of apathy and cynicism when any large-scale change is dismissed, this may seem a plausible argument but it begs the question. It assumes that a solution can be implemented within capitalism. But if it can’t (as we maintain), then concentrating on something now rather than on changing the basis of society and production will be a waste of valuable time while the situation gets worse.

Adam Buick

Life and Times: the climate campaigner (2022)

The Life and Times column from the June 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Climate Chaos’ was the title of a leaflet I was handed in the main shopping centre of the town I live in. I was given it by a young woman who was also keen to engage me in conversation and let me know about the purpose of the leaflet and the group of people she was part of who were using a loudhailer to put their point across to passers-by.

She told me that fossil fuels were polluting the environment and were the main cause of climate change and the best thing I could do was to get involved in her group’s cause and spread their arguments among the local community. The group was Extinction Rebellion (XR) Cymru.

Barclays and the government

I said I found it admirable that a group of young people cared enough about the state of the world to dedicate their time and energy in trying and improve it, but I wondered whether they were on quite the right track. She asked me what I meant and I pointed to a couple of the things I’d seen in the leaflet, in particular the statement that ‘government and Barclays are both criminally responsible for destroying our future’. I asked her how she thought that different policies by either could really make a significant difference to pollution and climate change.

This could happen in two ways, she said. Firstly Barclays could stop investing in fossil fuels, since they were, in the words of the leaflet, ‘knowingly destroying the world that we depend on’. Secondly the government could ‘use our taxes to create a sustainable future’ and get HMRC to ‘stop banking with Barclays and use an ethical bank’.

I told her I understood the group’s objectives and appreciated their determination to get XR’s message across in such a public way. But I also asked her whether she didn’t think that, even if they succeeded in putting enough pressure on the government and Barclays to get them to change their environmental policies, it would be more than just a drop on the ocean and do much to change the basic situation of ever increasing degradation of the eco-system.

A different take

I could tell by the look on her face that this didn’t please her and her rather sharp response was to ask me what I was doing about it. This was unexpectedly good for me, because it gave me the opportunity to say what I wanted to say but was worried that, if I simply came out with it unsolicited, it might seem preachy or dismissive of her efforts. And I didn’t want to have that effect, since then she probably wouldn’t listen to me seriously.

So as briefly and in as broad brush a way as possible, I tried to outline the position that the Socialist Party takes on the environment and climate change. I suggested that it wasn’t a freestanding problem but one of a whole range of problems that the profit-driven society we live in creates, meaning that even if we managed to alleviate one of those problems piecemeal, we would not actually solve it (since the need for economic expansion and profit would remain key) and anyway all the other problems implicit in the system (eg poverty, inequality, war, alienation) would remain and continue to torment us. I went on to say that I do my best to communicate to my fellow-workers, people just like herself, instead of trying to change bits of the current system, to unite together to bring in a completely different kind of world society, based on voluntary work, democratic decision-making and free access to all goods and services – so no money or wages, no buying and selling, no leaders or led, no borders or frontiers. And with a final flourish, I announced that this would only be possible once a majority of us wanted it and were prepared to take democratic action to bring it about.

Baby steps

I didn’t know quite what to expect as a response, so I was relieved to find her nodding and saying something like ‘sounds good, but… but it’s a long way off and we’ve got to do something in the meantime’. So, though I was pleased that any hostility seemed to have melted away, her stock ‘in the meantime’ response was still a barrier which I knew I wasn’t going to be able to overcome in a short discussion, especially as she was now going to want to give out more leaflets and speak to more people. It didn’t seem right to try to detain her either, but I could at least hope that, having implanted a new idea in her mind, once the day’s leafleting and campaigning had finished, she might reflect on that idea and wonder whether it wasn’t worth considering further.

I would have liked to have had a Socialist Standard with me to give her but I didn’t. However, I’d mentioned the name of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, so that might stick in her mind and maybe, who knows, bring her to the Party’s website? And I was encouraged that her parting shot was that she understood what I was saying and realised that what XR were advocating was only ‘baby steps’, but it was surely better than nothing and she didn’t see that their aims and the Socialist Party’s were incompatible. I didn’t think it was a good idea to disagree with that, even though what I would have liked to say was that it was worth thinking about whether XR’s aims, even in the unlikely event they were fulfilled within the current system, would bring us any nearer to the establishment of a socialist world which was the only feasible way to ensure the survival and indeed the flourishing of the natural environment and of all its living creatures.

Howard Moss

Generating an Energy Crisis (1973)

From the June 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

You may have noticed recently that capitalism is heading for another of its periodic crises. This time it is over the supply, or rather the lack, of energy. As world energy consumption increases at a rate of five per cent. per year (see Table 1) it has been predicted that power failures may become commonplace and transport and industry grind to a halt as the industrially advanced nations gobble up the planet’s remaining fossil resources.

Having recklessly squandered much of their indigenous fossil fuel supplies, literally without a thought for the future, some countries are finding themselves increasingly dependent on imported energy supplies. Britain’s dependence on imported energy rose from 25 per cent. in 1960 to 45 per cent. in 1970. The EEC as a whole in 1970 imported 63 per cent. of its energy requirement. Shell estimate that by 1985 Western Europe will be importing 900 million tons of oil yearly — the North Sea oilfield output of 250 million tons will be far short of demand.

Imports & Costs

The position in the United States appears to be even more critical. Three years ago Federal Power Commissioner Carl Bragge declared: “We may have to face up to the rationing of electricity as a matter of policy’’. President Nixon announced in February of this year that America was now consuming more energy than it produced. And it has been estimated that by 1980 America will be importing one third of its energy; even so it has a long way to go to catch Japan where some 90 per cent. of their energy demand is now imported.

Naturally fears have been expressed about the uncertainty over future prices of fuels which might affect trade and profits. In a debate in the House of Lords recently Liberal peer Lord Tanlaw said that

. . . as a nation which depends upon trade, it is vital that we should not let our energy costs get substantially out of line with those countries with whom we have to compete in international markets.

(Hansard 28 February 1973 col. 650)

This is particularly relevant in basic industries such as iron and steel and cement where direct fuel costs make up respectively 15 and 25 per cent. of the gross value of industrial output.

Tensions Develop

What the capitalist class requires are energy supplies which are secure and which will meet the foreseen needs of the economy at the lowest possible cost. These requirements are “planned for” in a state of international anarchy in which the best laid capitalist plan can come unstuck. For example the government’s 1967 White Paper on Fuel Policy made the exceedingly rash assumption that oil prices would remain stable. The intervening period has seen the producing countries gang together to hike up the price and the consumers have had to comply. But because the ruling class and their governments look at the problem with these narrow commercial priorities they see only the present short-term energy crisis. This will be solved, at least temporarily, by such measures as increased investment and by governments lowering protective trade barriers and underwriting the search for new supplies of the old fuels.

However there is a much more serious long-term energy crisis which capitalism has not yet faced up to. The present world set-up is unlikely to be able to provide the massive amounts of energy that will be necessary to raise the living standards of the world’s desperately poor majority even to the miserable level of the “affluent” west. Further, as industrialism spreads tensions are likely to develop over the control of present and possible future sources of energy supplies with the outbreak of war an ever-present possibility.

Assuming, and there is very strong evidence for doing so, that there are enough fossil fuel resources to last for at least the next one hundred years (see Table 2), is there in the longer run an alternative to the energy starvation predicted by some scaremongers? It is clear that to survive man must develop other sources of energy, for without energy man will be unable to continue to change the world around him for his own benefit. The present expansion of nuclear fission programmes may provide a short-term stop-gap but as a long-term solution it looks like being a non-starter. To succeed in replacing conventional fuels by nuclear power sufficient to meet demand in the year 2000 one 1,000 megawatt station a week should be built from now till then. As it is, half the power stations on order in the US are nuclear, and in 15 to 20 years one-third of the electricity in Europe will come from nuclear fission in an attempt to keep up with electricity consumption which doubles every ten years. In England and Wales output of electricity is now 50,000 MWe. By 2000 it is expected to be 160,000 MWe, half of it nuclear.

Using Fusion

But in the long run the reliance on nuclear fission has serious drawbacks, the most important of which is the production of highly dangerous radioactive waste by-products, some of which remain dangerous to human life for tens of thousands of years. (The rather frivolous suggestion that these might be shot off to the sun aboard a space rocket is not really on). Such waste products are dangerous even at very low levels and by the end of the century will present us with the problem of what to do with six-billion plus curies of Strontium 90 — thirty times as much as would be released by a nuclear war and enough to contaminate all the fresh water in the world. Still, it is possible that capitalism will decide that the economic considerations outweigh the risks of contamination. Obviously we must look elsewhere for future energy resources.

The most promising alternative so far is nuclear fusion. In the fission process a heavy nucleus is split into two parts and energy is released. In the fusion process on the other hand, two lightweight elements combine to form a heavier and more tightly bound nucleus with the simultaneous release of significant amounts of energy. This energy-releasing rearrangement collision can occur between various common isotopes of hydrogen. The beauty of it is that these isotopes are in virtually inexhaustible supply. For example there is estimated to be one Deuterium isotope for every 5,000 atoms of hydrogen. So abundant is this substance in sea water that to reduce the present concentration by a mere one per cent, would be equivalent to consuming 500,000 times the world’s initial supply of fossil fuels. One third of a cubic mile of sea water would equal the energy consumed by man up to 1960. Gram for gram several times more energy is released by fusion than by fission. In addition the fusion process would produce virtually no pollution problems from radioactive waste. The contamination of equipment would have a very short half life, and would form fuel for further energy-producing cycles. In fact it would be so safe that it might be possible to have the nuclear fusion stations near the centres of population.

Held Back

In spite of the obvious advantages of having a safe, clean and abundant energy supply, progress toward fusion power is being blocked by a lack of money. William Gough and Bernard Eastland of the US Atomic Energy Commission are convinced that the remaining problems are merely technical ones. They say that

. . . continuing effort is sustained by the growing conviction that the eventual attainment of a practical fusion power reactor is not blocked by the laws of nature . . . (and that) . . . At present the main factor limiting the rate of progress toward fusion power is financial.

(Scientific American February 1971) 

Their estimation of the date for the first fusion power reactor ranges from 10 to 50 years. Harold Furth, head of the Plasma Physics Laboratory at Princeton University, is convinced that

Estimates based on recent experimental progress indicate that a demonstration of the scientific feasibility of controlled fusion may be achieved before the end of the 1970s.

(Britannica Yearbook of Science and the Future, 1973.)

All this has been achieved virtually on shoe-string budgets. If the capitalists were really intent on solving the energy problem then massive research efforts on the scale of their various moon shots or their wartime search for the atomic bomb would be called for. Instead between the lot of them, they spend only a paltry £60 million per year world-wide on research into nuclear fusion. Compared with the massive “defence” budgets put up by all capitalist governments (£2,461 million by Britain alone in 1970) which have enabled strategists to build apparatus of death of such fiendish complexity that only a few years ago would have been considered totally impossible to build under any circumstances. These are the priorities capitalism fosters.

Cutting the Money

In this country nuclear fusion research suffered a serious set-back at the hands of the Labour government who were, it will be remembered, elected after promising to usher in the white-hot technological revolution. Wedgwood Benn demonstrated what a damp squib this promise was turning out to be. As Minister for Technology he was responsible for halving the research programme at Culham Laboratory despite the “outstanding quality and considerable scientific achievement” of the work done there in the field of nuclear physics for which it had a “high international standing.” Spending on this vital area of research declined from £4.5 million in 1966-67 to £3.9 million in 1969-70. When examined by a Select Committee on Science and Technology in March 1968 Dr. J. B. Adams had to admit that Culham Laboratory would have to reduce the amount of work on the fusion programme. In addition there would obviously be difficulties in maintaining the quality of that work, in maintaining the best of their staff, and in maintaining the morale of the staff.

The 1967 decision was made entirely on short-term economic grounds. It was argued that if fusion was going to be used it must come in because it is cheaper. (Remember the government were looking forward to a period of cheap stable-price oil supplies). All the other advantages were not considered worthy of financial support as fission reactors looked economically so attractive. In announcing the cuts Benn said:

. . . rapid progress has been made towards economic nuclear fission power. In particular the fast breeder reactor programme shows real promise. Consideration of this progress . . . leads inevitably to the conclusion that plasma physics and fusion research should be substantially reduced . . . I can understand . . . the need for focussing research on economic projects, which is very much part of the philosophy of my Department.

(Hansard 26 July cols. 644-647)

Keep it a Secret

Tom Boardman, Minister for Industry, told the House of Commons earlier this year that the Government had accepted recommendations of its fusion review committee to restore spending on fusion research almost to the 1967 level. To put this announcement in perspective it should be borne in mind that in this period the government spent £7 million annually on maintaining military bands. Still Culham Laboratory is lucky to survive at all. There was at one time (according to Jeremy Bray who was a Junior Minister at the time) a “. . . powerful body of opinion that the work should have been closed down altogether”. (Hansard 26 March 1968 col. 1441). When challenged he refused to give names but without losing ourselves in the realms of wild speculation we can suggest that they might represent the interests of a small minority group who wish to maintain the status quo — all those with investments in oil and nuclear fission technology for example. Such a group would see their capital investment devalued by a breakthrough in fusion research. Under capitalism the function of governments is to protect such investments in any way possible. Profits are put before human need, and now apparently before human survival!

This might also partly explain the starvation of funds for fusion research. It might also explain the more sinister developments now taking place in the United States. These involve the deliberate stone-walling over and attempted suppression of research into nuclear fusion. The experiences of Dr. LoDato and Professor S. A. Goudsmit, are cases in point. Dr. LoDato left the Rand Corporation to work on fusion power. He had been investigating the possibility of using beams of high intensity laser light to raise the nuclear fuel to a sufficiently high temperature for fusion to take place. This work was greeted enthusiastically by AEC scientists who were of the opinion that this represented a major breakthrough. Yet when he applied for a grant of $80,000 he was told that not only had his application been turned down but that all his work including his notebooks had been classified secret and that he was prohibited from discussing his work with anyone. Professor Goudsmit, editor of the highly specialized journal Physical Review Letters, sent an article submitted to him for publication to a “referee” for his comments. The referee replied that all but two paragraphs of his report could not be published in the journal until they had been declassified. Commenting on this cloud of what Goudsmit called “officially inspired reticence” the influential scientific journal Nature said:

. . . where laser-induced fusion is concerned, the AEC has apparently been trying to prevent independent authors from publishing their entirely independent research . . .

(Nature 16 February 1973)

Rehabilitation

At present, then, as The Times put it: “It certainly looks as if . . . ideas that may lead to new and better ways of generating electric power are not being allowed to be circulated” (21 February 1973). How successful these sectional interests within the capitalist class will be in thwarting future developments in this way is difficult to say. What we can be sure about is that Socialism, being a classless society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life by the whole community, such minority sectional interests could not possibly prevent the advance of knowledge by censoring the publication of the results of any kind of research. Socialism will be a society of abundance based on developments that are already taking place but which are warped and distorted by capitalism’s profit motive.

Given the scientific and technological possibilities plus the human priorities of Socialism we could have a world society of abundance and make a serious start to the big clean-up and rehabilitation of this degraded planet.

Gwynn Thomas

Editorial: The trade talks in Glasgow (2021)

Editorial from the December 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘A COP26 deal was always going to be a messy business, if world trade talks are anything to go by’ commented Larry Elliot, the Guardian’s economics editor (15 November). It was a shrewd observation as trade was the elephant in the conference room. No one referred to it directly but it was at the back of the delegates’ minds.

Global warming has been overwhelmingly caused by the burning of fossil fuels, for transport, heating and generating electricity. The price of electricity is a key cost in manufacturing industry; its price affects all industries in a country, whether producing for the internal market or for export, and so affects its competitiveness. Being uncompetitive is not a situation any state wants to be in as this makes exports more difficult and imports cheaper.

Different countries are in a different position, due to their geography and geology, regarding the cheapest way of generating electricity. None can rely solely on renewable sources. Some have built nuclear power stations. The most used way, however, is still burning a fossil fuel, either coal or natural gas.

Countries which have an internal supply of coal that can be extracted relatively cheaply use that. Such as China and India. Their objection to ‘phasing out’ burning coal was motivated by economic considerations; they didn’t want the competitiveness of their industries to be undermined by having to switch to some more expensive method of generating electricity.

Europe and the US burn natural gas as they have easy access to it, and so have no problem with ‘phasing out’ coal, especially as this puts China and India at a competitive disadvantage. Throw in the economic interest of countries exporting coal, oil and natural gas and COP meetings are indeed indirect trade talks.

Discussions on the liberalisation of world trade have been going on under the auspices of the WTO for over twenty years now, but have not got anywhere. One reason is that it is not a question of agreeing a text, but of making a commitment under international law with sanctions if you break it. COP deals are unenforceable and India and China could have signed up to ‘phasing out’ coal and then not done it. Nobody could have compelled them to comply. The fact that COP meetings are just discussing non-binding commitments is the only reason why a unanimously agreed text called a ‘deal’ can be reached.

Since there is now a general recognition even amongst those running capitalist states that global overwarming is a problem and is due to burning fossil fuels, something will be done to try to mitigate it, otherwise it will cost states more in the longer term. However, because capitalism is divided into states, each defending the economic interest of their enterprises whether private or state, there will never be an agreement on the world plan that is required to effectively deal with the problem. That will only be possible after the end of capitalism, the aim to which the energies of climate activists would be more usefully directed than putting pressure on ‘world leaders’ to do something that capitalism doesn’t let them do.

Pathfinders: Let’s start the real debate about climate change (2021)

The Pathfinders Column from the November 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who cares about the environment and global warming (which ought to be everyone) must have been appalled by news stories late last month that illustrate how the vast majority can want one thing while governments do the complete opposite. The fact that global fossil fuel production is not going to go down but up in the next decade, despite all the IPCC reports, the Paris Agreement, and all the pledges, shows that when it comes down to it, there’s no stopping the juggernaut of capitalism. Oil, gas, even coal use are expected to rise to double the level required by the Paris Agreement, making the 1.5°C threshold look increasingly like a bad joke.

But what are countries that derive their income largely from fossil extraction supposed to do? Of course they will mouth platitudes at COP meetings but they’re not seriously going to gut their own economies for the sake of the global common good. Quite the opposite, they’re going to increase production if there’s money in it, with the result that ‘governments continue to plan for and support levels of fossil fuel production that are vastly in excess of what we can safely burn’ (bbc.in/3vubcZZ).

Even the Queen recently felt compelled to note how irritated she was that politicians do a lot of talking about the climate but don’t DO anything, a point that would have been fair comment from anyone else but is a pretty staggering piece of hypocrisy from someone who, as Marina Hyde pointed out in the Guardian, travels everywhere by helicopter and private jet and ‘whose lawyers very recently lobbied the Scottish government in secret to change a draft law to exempt her private estates from a major carbon-cutting initiative’ (bit.ly/2Z8VVla).

Not only is no country on track to meet its climate targets, no country has any credible way of doing so. The UK’s best-case scenario is to achieve about a fifth of what it needs to do. If it even manages that it will be miraculous.

Is this just because governments are clueless and don’t care? No, it’s because capitalist economics is clueless and doesn’t care. Its logic is straight out of Alice in Wonderland. As an example, the UK is a world leader in offshore wind and has pledged to quadruple capacity to 40GW by 2030, potentially supplying electricity to every UK home (at least when the wind is blowing). Great, so what’s the problem? Well, the more there is of something, the lower the price falls, thus wind companies face a declining incentive to invest in more capacity (bbc.in/3vrBhc8). Abundance is great for people but terrible for business. That’s why there’s a gas shortage. That’s why oil prices are high. Capitalism depends on keeping things in short supply, even to the extent of destroying food and burning clothes. And when oil prices are high, people invest in alternatives like renewable energy, which you might think is good, but it also means more Arctic oil drilling and more deforestation. In climate terms, there is no ‘ideal’ capitalist situation. A win is always a lose somewhere else.

While climate campaigners have the luxury of making absurdly unrealistic demands, like net-zero by 2025, governments know they have to manage a system that puts profits first, and simply cannot back any reform which endangers this. So the UK government – so keen to position itself as a global leader on climate action – has recently defanged its own ‘landmark’ Environment Bill by rejecting virtually all the changes that environmentalists wanted, such as protection for ancient woodland, legal pressure to stop water companies polluting rivers, and not exempting the armed forces (a huge source of GHG emissions) from environmental restrictions (bbc.in/30NyVJH). Perish the thought that the army can’t drive its obsolete tanks or the navy its plane-less aircraft carriers because of namby-pamby climate concerns!

Governments exist to keep capitalism going, not to undermine it. Just as the poorest find their Universal Credit being cut in the name of the gigantic Covid deficit, chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced he’s cutting corporation tax surcharge on banks from 8 to 3 percent to keep the City competitive (bit.ly/3aV7SxI).

Meanwhile, as if to add insult to injury, the media is full of news stories about how you yourself can ‘save energy at home and help the planet’ with meaningless little gestures that George Monbiot describes as ‘micro-consumerist bollocks’, and expensive domestic modifications that none but the well-off can afford. Now the government has announced a ban on new gas heaters from 2035, which means that if you’re a young couple now, even in the unlikely event you can afford a house, your gas boiler will be just about ready for replacement when the ban comes in. Then the poor who can’t afford the approximately £6-18,000 for a heat pump will presumably have to dance all winter to stay warm (not to mention run all the way to work because they can’t afford an electric car either). But fear not, the government’s recent announcement of a £5k subsidy for heat pumps means that anyone with a spare £10k to spend will be quids in.

Capitalism isn’t going to change how it operates for anyone. Instead governments rely on greenwash announcements about what increasingly cynical Greta Thunberg calls ‘fantasy-scaled, currently barely-existing, negative emissions technologies.’ Or, as she puts it even more succinctly, ‘blah blah blah’.

The 2007 Stern Report called climate change ‘the biggest market failure the world has seen’. In September this year even the UK business secretary admitted that it was a ‘market failure’ (bit.ly/3AYHQUI). Is it so hard, in the light of all the above, to conclude that markets simply don’t work, that capitalism is a ‘weapon pointed at the world’, as Monbiot says? The alternative isn’t soviet state capitalism or living in caves, it’s democratic common ownership where there is no out-of-control growth caused by the perpetual race for profit because there will be no markets and no money system. Capitalism’s greatest success is that it has made itself obsolete by delivering the technology, the communications and the know-how for us to actually turn the world into a giant volunteer cooperative, with no rich and poor, where we can all be free of the worst that capitalism dishes out and instead enjoy the best that life can offer. Why buy when you can just have? Why sell when you can just give? That’s not a utopia, it’s a practical and sustainable alternative to a system that is doing its best to destroy everything. There are a huge number of things we could do right now to limit climate change, halt species extinction, stop wars for oil or profit and stop terrible human misery and deprivation. But first we need to get real about the thing that, above all else, is driving these problems in the first place. It’s not human production, it’s human production for profit. We need to get real about capitalism. Instead of appealing to useless governments to ‘fix’ it, we need to start mainstreaming the debate about progressing beyond it altogether.

Paddy Shannon

Towards Zero (2021)

Book Review from the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: the Political Economy of Saving the Planet. Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin, with C.J. Polychroniou. Verso £12.99.

This is not truly a book written by Chomsky and Pollin together; rather both respond individually to questions posed by Polychroniou, who adds a short introduction. Chomsky begins by saying that climate change presents a new ‘threat of destruction of organized human life in any recognizable or tolerable form’ and then discusses how the US Republican Party has served corporate power, with the Koch brothers supporting the use of fossil fuels, where they made their fortune. But it’s not clear if this justifies describing the Republicans as ‘the most dangerous organization in world history’.

Historically, the main blame for causing climate change since 1800 falls on Western Europe and the US (i.e. the economic systems there), while the richest tenth of the earth’s population are responsible for nearly half of all emissions tied to personal consumption. The poorest are the hardest-hit, such as dry land farmers, who rely on rain for irrigation. Extreme weather events, such as cyclones and hurricanes, have had devastating impacts on some places, including Zimbabwe and Puerto Rico.

Pollin notes that it is realistic in principle to reduce global CO2 emissions to net zero by 2050, by means of improving energy efficiency and expanding clean renewable energy sources. Existing nuclear plants, which do not emit CO2, could continue for a while, yet cannot be part of a long-term solution. Despite some alarmist claims, relatively small proportions of land need to be used to generate sufficient solar and wind energy, perhaps three percent of the land in the UK and just one percent in the US, which is less densely populated.

Closing fossil fuel enterprises would mean the loss of masses of jobs and far smaller tax revenues, but use of clean energy can lead to job creation; unfortunately these points show how much the authors are really stuck within the assumptions and framework of capitalism. They do show some scepticism, such as Chomsky saying that we are doomed if profit-making remains the driving force, and that production for profit cannot be sustained. ‘Dismantling’ capitalism is supposedly not possible in the time frame needed, but doing so should proceed in parallel with averting environmental disaster, though no argument is made that the two together can be achieved in time.

Pollin states that eco-socialism and the Green New Deal are fundamentally the same project, but since the latter assumes the retention of money and employment, it is certainly not the same as our vision of World Socialism. There are some references to ‘establishing the basis for a future free and democratic society within the present one’, apparently based on Bakunin’s ideas, but hardly anything about achieving this is in a practical way. After all, it will be much more straightforward to implement carbon reduction in a world without profit and corporations.

Paul Bennett

Four wheel oil crisis (1979)

From the July 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

So is there another oil crisis or not? The government, and the motoring organisations, insist that there is not — yet. During the recent Spring bank holiday garages were shut, and those that did open were charging up to £1.50 a gallon for petrol.

So is the motor car doomed? What of alternative energy? Questions like these seem to be commonplace these days, but really, what is the situation?

Demand for petrol is rising at a time when oil companies are saying they can only meet last year’s delivery levels. With Iran going ‘off stream’ and exporting no oil at all for some months, and the oil-producing countries (OPEC) seizing their chance to increase prices by varying amounts (dependent on how ‘moderate’ their governments are), the hopes of British capitalism turn again to the North Sea.

The situation became such that a meeting of energy ministers was called in Paris in May to decide the appropriate action to be taken. This meeting only served to emphasise the problems of trying to get agreement between capitalist countries on something so vital as their access to sources of oil. Its result was a relatively ineffectual statement that a cutback of five per cent would be attempted.

America, which consumes twice as much oil as others, is a prime victim for expected cutbacks. But American workers regard their cars as almost sacrosanct. And politicians rely on motorists’ votes, just as the motor industry relies on a market. So much of the American economy relies on the motor industry that a cutback in oil consumption, at this time, is highly unlikely.

Transition to obsolescence
So where does the problem lie? The capitalist world relies on its oil supplies. Industry and the domestic scene is almost as dependent on oil as we are on the air we breathe and oil is running out! In fact, the oil-powered car was doomed at its outset and has long been living on borrowed time. The internal combustion engine was developed at a time of seemingly unlimited supplies of fuel. It is uneconomic, inefficient, and is now making the hard transition to obsolescence.

The internal combustion engine and its petroleum fuel (with additives) is a major source of modern-day pollution. Lead from exhausts, hydrochloric acid, carbon monoxide, noise, accidents, and so on, are direct sources of pollution. Add to this the indirect sources in associated industries like rubber, steel and chemicals, and some measure of the problem can be imagined. This observation also gives some indication of the capital investment involved. And here is the crux of the matter.

Alternative Fuels
So what is to happen to the motor car? It has become such a necessity to so many people that its withdrawal would cause a major upheaval in society. It has undermined the profitability of so-called public transport, with the result that services have been cut and geared to their profitability rather than usefulness. So, returning to the matter of the motor car, are there alternative fuels and propulsion units?

Hydrogen, electricity, even nuclear fuel, are suggestions. No doubt the motor industry will become even more cut-throat as the oil situation worsens. Some industries will fold up, others will emerge. New technologies will probably result, and slowly and painfully the motor industry will change to a new fuel/propulsion system or transport concept.

This is the standard day to day, year to year running of capitalism. Crisis to crisis. And it is the workers, the majority of people in this world, who suffer. As capitalism survives it will continue to cause hardship, anxiety and stress to the working class. Fuel/propulsion systems, the oil crisis, other industrial/domestic problems, will all come and go, but always as dictated by capitalism’s drive for profit. And this crazy, inefficient, polluting system will last until those workers act to abolish it. Something to think about in the traffic jam — or the queue for the petrol pump.

MJSP

Cooking the Books: Anyone for coal? (2008)

The Cooking the Books column from the May 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of the fossil fuels the worst in terms of emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is coal. So, why, if something has to be done to reduce CO2 emissions (as most scientists in the field advise), are plans afoot to reopen coal mines in Britain?

An article “Old King Coal makes comeback in Britain” (18 March) on uk.reuters.com reported:

  “Coal mining is making a comeback in Britain as the quest for secure energy supplies chips away at environmental objections and record high prices for the raw material make pits economically viable”.

As the price rises it becomes profitable to exploit more difficult coal seams despite it costing more to work them. Already “two moth-balled deep mines reopened recently, two more were under review and a third working mine was recruiting experienced staff to develop a new seam”.

Capitalist firms are influenced in their choice of fuel by a short-term consideration such as the going market price. Governments can take a longer view, but not that long, a couple of decades at most. In Britain energy policy has been driven by changes in the relative prices of coal, oil and gas. Up to the 1960s coal was massively predominant. Then, when oil became relatively cheaper, the 1964 Wilson Labour government decided to run down the coal industry. Following the Arab-Israel War in 1973, which led to the closing of the Suez Canal, the price of oil soared and Tony Benn, as the Minister of Technology at the time, was able to be appear as the miners’ friend by keeping open pits previously earmarked for closure. It also put the NUM in a position to win two national strikes.

From the 1980s cheap gas from the North Sea became available. The Thatcher government decided to practically close down the coal industry, taking on and breaking the NUM in the process. Even so, there is still a small coal industry in Britain producing 17 million tonnes a year: a further 43 million tonnes are imported.

To combat global warming the government wants to reduce reliance on burning fossil fuels and increase the use of renewable sources of electricity such as wind power. But renewable energy will only take off if it becomes cheaper than fossil fuels (and nuclear power). Currently it isn’t.

The theory is that as oil runs out its price will rise, making renewable sources relatively cheaper. The trouble is that it also makes it profitable to exploit previously marginal sources of oil such as tar sands and oil under the deep sea. And it makes it profitable to exploit marginal sources of coal.

Even if oil does run out, coal won’t. According to the Reuters report, “Experts tend to agree that, with estimated global reserves for 300 years, coal is not going to go away because it is relatively cheap to extract, to burn and readily available despite the dilemma that it is also the most polluting fuel”.

Actually, it’s more readily available in some places than others – in the US and China for instance – and they are not likely to give up the competitive advantage this access to a cheap source of energy gives them.  Which is why they have resisted international arrangements such as Kyoto which seek to make coal-burning relatively more expensive. But even coal-importing countries like Britain are not going to refuse to use coal if it’s cheaper, as can be seen by the government’s recent decision to authorise the building of a new coal-fired power station.

To do otherwise would be commercial madness. Energy enters into the cost of most products,  so to choose a more expensive source would be to make your country’s goods less competitive on world markets.

That no government will do. Under capitalism renewable sources will only be adopted on a wide scale when the price becomes right. But how long will that take? In the meantime coal will continue to be burned.