GREEN CAPITALISM:A Failure

Ghassan Karam

“To be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise”

ECOLOGIST: (Leopold)

Leopold *Mill Roegen *Malthus Daly *Zizek Naess *Harvey Hardin *Foster Bookchin *Wilson Mumford *Marx Ehrlich *Goodwin Hansen *Lovelock Diamond *Sagoff Speth *Taintter

References

Total failure at all levels Deal with superficial only Emphasize symptoms Never go to the root Avoid rocking the boat (teach what is known to be false)

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

Net Primary Production 3/9 Planetary boundaries have been breeched Millennium Ecosystem assessment Study. Lovelock /Hansen /Speth projections Peak Oil Fisheries I=f(P,A,T) Water Scarcity Desertification Ecological foot print

Signs, concepts & indicators of ecological degradation

Solution is NOT in ecology itself.

Apply principle of Specificity.

Call for a radical change in structure that created the problem: CAPITALISM

What to do?

What is it that we wish to sustain? Intergenerational equity Veil of Ignorance Pareto Optimality Free market cannot guarantee sustainability Allocations always favour the present

Sustainability

2nd Law of Thermodynamics

The more we do the less we have

Substitutability vs Complimentarity

Simplicity: Is it possible to revert to it?

Entropy & Sustainability

Popularized by Daly Given rise to CASSE New Economics Foundation Tim Jackson New Economics Institute Goodwin

Basic premise: Constant human population and constant physical output

Steady State: A Possible Way Out

Competition and Tragedy of the Commons New Indulgances (Ex. BAU and organic) Greenwashing (Pretense: Climate Change) Three R’s (Is Recycling the only one

compatable with perpetual growth?) Brown even wrote about a world with no

need for new extracting activities lol. Capitalism, ecological crisis, economic and

financial crisis.

Critiques of Green Capitalism

Growth vs limits Could system be reformed ? (Not if the

privileges of the global elite are maintained) Climate change is the product of a specific

economic system and its negative effects fall primarily on those least responsible for the crisis.

Critique cont.

Green Capitalist( Hawken, Brown, Cairncross, Lovin, Gore…)

Belief to de-couple growth from carbon Efficiency leads to more and not less. De materialization is quite limited Green often creates new problems ( Cut the

amazon to plant sugar cane for organic food stores and farm raised fish; certified wood)

Technological solution

In Us energy intensity dropped but energy usage increased.

EV vs source for electricity

Prius vs Nickel

60% of car pollution is in production

Clean Energy and base load

Green Gone Wrong

Market based solutions have aggravated the problems:

organic eco architecture bio fuels hybrid cars carbon offsets clean coal

Green Gone Wrong

Kyoto failed (Gr. & UK only 2 to meet target) Cap & Trade failed ( because of T. of

Commons) Carbon Tax failed (They were kept too low) Can we decrease carbon foot print and use

non conventional oil? Democrats and Republicans (RR, Bush Sr;

Bush Jr ;Clinton and Obama oppose carbon taxes)

Climate Change and Green Capitalists

His is an “unquestioned belief that the answers to every human dilemma and desire is a gizmo… the very attitude that gave us Global warming to begin with”

How about abolishing obscene excesses, a modicum of equitable distribution? How about asking whether we are of the same specie , members of the same family and citizens of the same community?

Is there a moral obligation to others?

Gore ….

Daily consumption 200 million B. Equivalent Renewables represent 0.6% The above indicates that large cuts are

required but not for Green Capitalists: Sternest 1% cost in UK and Krugman 1.1-3% for US. ( That does not make any sense)

Stern targets 550ppm when Hansen speaks of 350ppm.

550 ppm increase temp. by 3C (That’s where we were 3 million years ago)

Green Capitalism vs Science

Green Capitalists are dreaming View that Max. exploitation and saving the planet are compatible is

a farce. CEO’s max for shareholders and not the public good. Green Capitalists have been trying for 30 years: Eco system is still

collapsing Their diagnosis is accurate but their prescription is wrong Underestimate severity of eco crisis and overestimate de-

materialization They conveniently forget that consumerism is not dispensable. This is a capitalist crisis. It is about mode of production and system

architecture. Capitalist system carries within it the seeds of its own destruction

since growth is not sustainable. Einstein:” Insanity is to do the same thing over and over againbut

expecta different outcome”

Conclusion

There is a crisis of capitalism that manifests itself in Econ. Finance and Ecological spheres.

Green Capitalism is for the Environment as long as it can profit from it.

Easterbrook: “What’s in it for me?”

Green Capitalism is the problem and so it cannot be the solution.

Capitalism cannot be reformed. (It cannot survive on a reduced level of intensity).

Capitalism is root cause, it is the historical roots; it is an infinite project in a finite world.

“Only mad men and economists believe in infinite growth in a finite world.”

Can we afford to wait for the revolution/transformation? No. That is why catastrophe IS the future if we keep our timid responses.

Continued:

Speth:

In the end we need to trigger a response that in historical terms will come to be seen as revolutionary. Only such a response is likely to avert huge and even catastrophic environmental losses.

Continued II