An energy transition is underway but it is too slow to avert a climate catastrophe and it ignores many other environmental and social challenges that need tackling now. Capitalism has got us into this mess but doesn’t have the tools to get us out of it. Perhaps ecosocialism and Extinction Rebellion provide some answers.
It might be easy, even for someone who follows the scientific evidence about climate change, to think that we are on track to avert a climate disaster. The world’s nations agreed in 2015 to limit global warming to well under 2oC, didn’t they!?? Sources of renewable energy (wind, solar and batteries) are getting more efficient, are now cheaper than fossil fuels and are being rolled out across the world. Coal is dying. Electric vehicles are getting cheaper and more popular. The fossil fuel divestment movement is growing daily. The public, businesses and investors increasingly want climate action. There can be no denying that an energy transition from dirty fossil fuels to clean renewable energy is underway.
But is the transition occurring quickly enough? Is there a danger that people will infer from all this ‘good’ news that we are on track to avert an environmental disaster? Will it generate false expectations and hope? And is focussing on the energy transition diverting attention away from other environmental and social problems that are just as serious and need simultaneous urgent attention? Let’s do a reality check.
Despite the tripling of wind and solar capacity over the previous decade, in 2018 they still contributed only 2% of the world’s total energy supply; coal, oil and gas contributed 82%. Looking only at the world’s electricity generation in 2018, wind and solar contributed about 10%, and coal and gas about 60%. Between 2013 and 2018, ‘wind-and-solar’ and ‘coal-and-gas’ increased their electricity generation by the same amount, about 2,000 terawatt hours. Over the next decade, eight major oil and gas companies are planning production increases that will lift the CO2 emissions of the fuels they produce by 13%. There is no wonder that global CO2 emissions and levels in the atmosphere are still rising, as is global warming. To have just a two in three chance of keeping global warming under 1.5oC (2oC is far from safe) the world needs to reduce its emissions at over 7% per year if we start today. If we don’t peak emissions until 2025, the required reduction jumps to 15% per year. If we haven’t halved emissions by 2030, it will be impossible to keep warming to anything like a safe level for the environment or humans. The next ten years will be critical.
And all that ignores positive feedbacks and tipping points in Earth Systems that are likely to lead to runaway global warming and an uninhabitable ‘Hothouse Earth’. Nor does it consider other very serious environmental challenges, particularly loss of biodiversity, captured in the nine Planetary Boundaries; or the need to tackle simultaneously the many social inequalities and social injustices that abound intra- and inter-nationally, particularly the North-South divide. And don’t get me started on the incompetents, crooks, cronies and lickspittles who run the governments and companies we hope will plan and navigate a way through this mess.
In a nutshell, I don’t think that the world will make the environmental, social and democratic changes necessary in the next ten years to head off an environmental catastrophe later in the century. A catastrophe that will lead to societal collapse, and a dramatic fall in the world population to perhaps one billion people. I don’t think that the governments of the world have the will to make the necessary changes and even if they had I don’t think that they know how to make and enforce the decisions needed to make it happen quickly, equitably and peacefully across the globe.
How did we get to this parlous condition? Capitalism. The essential feature of capitalism is the investment of personal wealth (capital) in the expectation that the company you invest in will make a profit and that you will get more back than you invested – your capital will grow. Some businesses fail and some investments are lost of course (that’s innovation and competition … and also sometimes monopoly control and corruption) but across the whole economy capital grows. Profits are made by the exploitation of workers and the environment, with the result that wealth and power accumulate in a few hands and social inequalities increase. Simultaneously, the environment becomes depleted (in the case of natural resources such as fresh water, fertile soil, fish stocks, forests, minerals) and polluted (with, for example, greenhouse gases, toxic chemicals and plastics).
If capitalism got us into this mess, does it have the economic tools to get us out of it? Can a free market economy, unlimited economic growth, exploitation of workers and treating the environment as both our pantry and our toilet deliver environmental sustainability, social justice, a redistribution of power and wealth, life with dignity for all, democracy, and demilitarised peace?
Economists such as Ross Gittins, Nicholas Stern, Ross Garnaut and Joseph Stiglitz, and organisations like the World Bank and the governments of the G20 think that ‘progressive capitalism’, ‘capitalism with a human face’ and ‘green capitalism’ can do the job. They think that continuous economic growth (perhaps driven by the provision of services rather than the production and consumption of things) is not just possible but also absolutely necessary for us to achieve such goals. They think it can be achieved with a carbon price, 100% renewable energy, a circular economy, stopping deforestation, sustainable agriculture, eating less meat, etc.
Some people look at the fact that humans are already consuming the resources of 1.5 ‘sustainable’ Earths and the need and right for people in the global South to enjoy the same living standards as those in the affluent North and say ‘degrowth’ is essential. Maybe going back to the sorts of consumption patterns people in the West had in the 1960s and 70s.
Others are agnostic about growth, believing that if we make human wellbeing and environmental sustainability our principal goals maybe economic growth will occur, maybe it won’t. Kate Raworth is in this camp with her idea of Doughnut Economics.
And then there are the ecosocialists, people who consider that the only way that the goals I outlined above can be achieved is if environmental sustainability is combined with socialism. Not the socialism of twentieth century USSR and its satellites but a truly democratic socialism with social justice, a life of dignity for all, collective ownership of the means of production, full employment, and an end to the exploitation of workers and to profit and wealth accumulation.
I’m in the ecosocialist camp but I don’t know if or how we can make the transition, certainly not in the very short time we have left to avert the climate catastrophe. I’m not ready to give up yet though. If nothing else, we can try to limit the impacts of the catastrophe by tackling the causes with no-regret actions (e.g. many of the policies that the progressive capitalism promoters advocate for); we can start preparing individuals and societies for the inevitable impacts of the catastrophe; we can focus on the most disadvantaged and oppressed people; and we can start building democracy and social justice. Crucially, our attention must be on what we, individually and collectively, must do over the next ten years. Put the focus on 2030, not 2050 or 2100.
So, I’m not sure about the destination and I certainly don’t have a road map. But I do know that we have to do a lot more than is currently being done by governments, international agencies and businesses. The system needs a severe shake up. The most promising development in recent years is Extinction Rebellion: mass, peaceful disruption of the normal functioning of society and government but on a far grander, more widespread scale than has been seen so far. Capitalism has dangerously disrupted the Earth’s environment and systems. Environmental activists must disrupt capitalism.
This article was originally published on the website of the Public Health Association of Australia and is based on a talk given at the Australian Public Health Conference 2020 in October.
Peter Sainsbury is a retired public health worker with a long interest in social policy, particularly social justice, and now focusing on climate change and environmental sustainability. He is extremely pessimistic about the world avoiding catastrophic global warming.
Comments
22 responses to “Does anyone really believe we are going to avert a climate catastrophe?”
Ecosocialism is still a dangerous ideology which should not be supported. Socialism in general, whether it be the USSR version of socialism or Ecosocialism are still dangerous ideologies. This ideology killed 100 million people and socialism failed in every country it was implemented. Both socialism and Ecosocialism will only lead to more massacres, persecutions, mass starvation of civilians and destruction of the economy. Ecosocialism is going to end up as the same deadly socialist ideology that was implemented in Cuba, China and the Soviet Union because they are all the same thing. Socialism never works. It is a deadly Marxist concept. Social justice is also bad because it has led to left-wing authoritarianism and suppression of free speech in society.
It’s election day here in Queensland and I’m waiting in a queue at the pharmacy for my new anti-anxiety meds.
Thanks for the article Peter. I’ve been a regular on Maine University’s climate reanalyzer for years. There, over time, I’ve seen the trends and changes. More meridional atmospheric temperature anomalies as the heat pushes to the poles. Changes to the periodicity of the Jet Stream. They even expanded the scale for temperature anomalies.
But little of this is evidence sufficient to change belief. What’s new here, in Qld, is now PHONP organizers are conspicuous at the polling booths in their bright orange tees.
The meds work.
Since anthropogenic climate change remains unproven, surely we must first establish, as much as is possible, what is happening which is unusual, if indeed it is, in planetary history, and what causes might be? Not all scientists agree with the conventional climate change theories but they are ignored.
One would have thought following the massive decline in travel, in any form, and diminished industry on many counts, during 2020 because of Covid, that there would be a plethora of stories revealing how things have improved with reduced carbon emissions.
There is however nothing but silence which indicates there is nothing to say. Which says, dramatically diminished carbon emissions achieve next to nothing and humans being house-bound are clearly not the cause of any perceived changes in the weather or surmised changes in the climate.
The only dire aspect is the complete lack of scientific and academic integrity on the topic of climate changes. Good science is never settled and the best science never censors. Which means pretty much everything said on what is called climate change is worthless because it is bad science.
Absolutely spot on. Thank you, Peter. As dire as it all sounds, it’s a relief to see the written word on all this. The politics and governments who drive economies seem to be the major problem. They just don’t get it. Mind you Boris had a plug at Morrison this week, which was impressive. Terrible to say this but who can blame Mother Nature for trying hard to deplete the human footprint due to our lack of effort as humans. My daughter in the UK told me that there are heaps of different types of Coronaviruses out there which are showing up as positive tests too. Going by other children’s symptoms for Covid-19 it looks like my granddaughter, my daughter and partner all went down with it in London Feb-Mar 2020 but thought at the time it was a bad flu. Extinction Rebellion looks like the way to go…along with cranking back our use of dirty resources immediately. I’ve known about this abuse of the environment by capitalism since the early 70s. It’s been a long protest.
XR doesn’t convince me, nor David Attenborough. Strategy isn’t effective. https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/david-attenborough-extinction-rebellion-xr-19009519
Thanks Peter, for a realistic appraisal of what we face, how great the challenge, and how little time we have.
Fundamentally, what is required is for about a billion people to voluntarily a whole lot of “stuff” which is available to them: freedom to travel as they like; ever bigger homes with constant T-shirt comfort; plenty of meat; rampant consumerism; etc, etc.
Like Dufa Wira, and the authors he adduces, I fear that liberal democracies can’t do it. But I fear the alternatives.
It is tempting to give up. But I keep thinking that whatever changes we can effect will at least make the coming catastrophe a little less bad – so it is important that we all keep trying.
In their book, “The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy”, (Praeger, 2007), David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith contend that our market economy and unfettered corporate power is as instrumental as our excessive fossil fuel pollution in the collapse of ecosystem services.
They argue that the sort of ‘freedom’ associated with liberal democracy amounts to a freedom to plunder and that a different sort of political economy is needed to mitigate and remediate the social and ecosystem degradation that is the climate crisis.
They find (p.71) that humanity has three governance options:
– a market forces liberal democracy with refinement (monetary valuation of ecosystem services, commons trading, green accounting, etc.)
– a radical ecocentric liberal democracy
– strict enforcement of ecological rules by an authoritarian government
They acknowledge that a refinement of ‘market forces’, no matter how broad, will not be enough. They agree that an ecocentric liberal democracy would work, but they dismiss it as unrealistic, since no democracy would voluntarily chose this option. They conclude that enforcement of ecological rules by an authoritarian government ”may be the only solution for humanity”. They accept that the Earth’s capacity to provide ecological services will be extinguished without totalitarian control of human activity.
Ten years ago I still hoped that we humans had a chance for an ecocentric liberal democracy, with all the new knowledge, new jobs, new accounting and new money that that would entail. I was just beginning to understand how an ecocentric political economy based on good laws and land relations sustained the health, wealth and happiness of Australia’s Aboriginal nations at levels superior to the European merchant class around 1750. Aboriginal political economies provided strong incentives to care for country and to act with playful wisdom, constraint and generousness of heart towards others.
Avoiding harm to ecosystem services means: slowing the flows, sustaining diversity and taking care of the creatures below us (in the food chain or workplace), since they sustain the ecosystem services, and feed us.
We were offered the Uluru Statement from the Heart and have rejected it.
But it’s 2020 and we’ve had clear proof of global heating for over 50 years, while doing nothing to reform our ‘freedom to plunder’ political economy.
Welcome to the Brave New World.
Thanks Peter for your thoughtful article.
To date we only have one earth planet to call home !
Our planet evolves around complex earth systems.
Human movement and residence across the planet is diverse and ever changing over time.
The very nature of Human existence over time means Complex Human systems directly interface with Complex Earth systems.
Splitting Human activity into big picture doing and thinking we could plot a graph for either.
Vertical axis = rate of change.
Horizontal axis = time ongoing.
For doing [tools and toys etc], we see a substantial up curve over time.
For thinking [mind sets and behaviours], almost a flat line.
A current example is the governments YA for STEM subjects and NA for Humanities.
Ever changing time has allowed Humans the chance to build complex Human systems [doing],
however we continue to shit in our own nest when it comes to how we treat and understand each other via our thinking.
We need to grow in our thinking at this time especially at the interface between Complex Earth systems and Complex Human systems.
Noted on this site is a narrative about knowledge and understanding !
May I suggest an excellent book about Indigenous thinking to get the brain cells active and challenged.
SAND TALK by Tyson Yunkaporta
Ecosocialism makes sense to me. Especially since the 1980s when both sides of the aisle adopted the neoliberal version of capitalism as their preferred ideal. They talk about climate change and seem to think that’s all that’s needed. I wasn’t impressed especially as I could see the privatisation fetish becoming a burden on consumers. That’s when I decided to do something and for the last thirty years I have lived off the coal based grid, saved a small fortune and emitted zero carbon type gases! It’s easy enough.
Thanks Peter for your thoughtful article.
Having been one of the few who tried to explain the nature and consequences of the global warming catastrophe over the last 16 years or so (in publications, petitions, conferences, debates with those in denial and meetings with parliamentarians), I perceive a huge blind spot where people, even with the best intentions, may be unable to come to terms with the issue. There are many reasons, some of which are obvious, i.e. objections by vested interests and their political mouthpieces and lobbies. Other factors include:
(1) The global scale of the problem, i.e. the foundation of modern civilization, to date, in fossil fuel combustion;
(2) The apparent inability of many, including in governments, to understand that the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has ALREADY reached a level (over 500 ppm CO2 equivalent) which generated carbon-releasing amplifying feedback from land and ocean. Examples are global-scale fires, methane release from permafrost, warming oceans (which limits CO2 absorption).
(3) The only theoretical option would be for governments to initiate large-scale carbon draw-down efforts, not yet in evidence..
(4) It is a natural human reaction to abhor “end of time” projections. The psychological reluctance of many, including progressive people, to accept the reality that civilization can hardly survive 3 and 4 degrees Celsius of global warming, is expressed by an inherent optimism that leads many to assume limited mitigation efforts may be able to allow the biosphere to return to an habitable state.
By the time the effects of global warming catastrophe are obvious to all, mainly due to sea level rise on the scale of meters, it may be TOO LATE to do anything about it.
Andrew wrote:
“It is a natural human reaction to abhor “end of time” projections.”
Indeed, I am conscious of this myself in the last twenty years of three events, of spouse being diagnosed with worst kind of brain tumour, of suddenly seeing in rear vision mirror that car has caught fire from near fuel tank, and most recently, falling on perfect flat carpeted hospital floor and smashing a major bone in my leg. I am hard nosed by nature but you go through a phase of whatever length of saying “this can’t be happening”. With climate change there isn’t confronting evidence like a clear and appalling leg x-ray to force reality upon you. So many people duck for cover and say they are watching the evidence. There is then the cheapo rejection of climate change effect in saying “you can’t prove these summer fires were the product of climate change” …and the precautionary principle instead of producing action says well, just a moment, lets not go thinking so much.
I agree with your prognosis. I’m losing my last shreds of optimism.
But let me suggest – neither ‘capitalism’ nor ‘socialism’. If we managed the incentives under which markets operate, we might harness them to better purposes, like surviving. That suggestion will enrage the closed-minded on both sides, and that’s part of the problem.
We have all the means we need to get out of this mess (even now), we just need to use them. That means disempowering the presently powerful. That’s what I see as the crux of the problem.
See The Little Green Economics Book and Economy, Society, Nature:
http://betternaturebooks.net.au
I don’t think the profitable nature of fossil fuels can be neglected. The use-value and charm of non-fossil fuels is that they are renewable. It does not take long for the energy to be free. Water has been privatised much to everyone’s costs and to the land, but energy could be national or local. If wind and solar were local, we would be free of (some) centralised state control and of the profit makers. Wind can be collected more cheaply than now. Some sort of democratic local socialism is only ideal if these are spread evenly. We can look to Scandinavia for earlier models (some have since been sadly reduced).
Certainly we should not neglect fossil fuel profitability. We can, first, remove the very large subsidies they get, second, impose a cost that forces the world to rapidly reduce its use of them, and use the better and cheaper options we now have.
This illustrates what I’m talking about – adjusting the incentives of markets to promote good things and discourage bad things. It is a myth that markets, left to themselves, will do this for us. The mayhem all around us illustrates the point dramatically.
YES! I believe we are going to avert a climate catastrophe … Because global warming is bullshit,
And I don’t like darkiés …
Kind regards, Pauline Hanson and all who sail in me.
Yes, but also… it’s not just climate change but the disease pandemic and the collapse of decent government almost everywhere, compounded by the reluctance of the mob to tolerate decent government, readiness to elect reckless and wicked fools, while piously wanting to bring down countries that seem to be surviving.
There are serious historians and archaeologists comparing now with the collapse of the Bronze Age, adjacent civilisations of cities depending on diplomacy and trade, literate and sophisticated, gone inexplicably, whacked by climate and climate refugees, running out of food:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B965f8AcNbw
How to encourage younger people to make fundamental changes? At my age I include the Prime Minister and most of those in political or business power as younger people.
Just to put the cards on the table, climate change is a serious issue – a global threat. Am I optimistic? The hell I’m not. The problem is “us”. I read yesterday that more than 80% of people polled believe in climate change and want action. That’s great – but they want governments to do the work. Stop and think – of those 80% plus, statistically, 30% to 40% are likely to drive an SUV or dual-cab. A 2.5 tonne vehicle that is mostly driven on urban roads with a single occupant. A recent study suggests that if the emissions from the globe’s SUV fleet were aggregated, only 6 countries in the world would have greater TOTAL emissions. So what are “we” going to do about that? “We” aren’t going to do anything and in fact, if 100 people went out tomorrow to buy a new car, statistics indicate that at least 50 of them would buy an SUV. Yes, I am singling out SUV-buyers (I loathe them as an expression of our faux-affluence, self-importance and craven lusting for the envy and attention of others), but it is a symptom of “us” – “we” are simply not interested in changing our behaviours. “We”, as individuals, think that anything a single person does is irrelevant, so we use that to rationalise doing nothing. Then that same rationale applies to Australia – “we” as a country could stop emissions completely and it makes no global difference, or so the argument goes. Worse is that Australia does nothing and our weasel-word spouting Emperor Morrison claims he is taking decisive action, when the reverse is true. But in the end, this is the national excuse for doing nothing (“if Australia can’t do anything to make a difference, nothing I do will make a difference”), when a solution to climate change will only be achieved by the aggregation of the actions of the many, at the personal and the national level. Yes, in an over-arching sense, the problem is capitalism, but the real issue is “us”. We are travelling on the “capitalist” train and not planning to get off anytime soon.
“the problem is capitalism”. But socialist and other economic systems are emitting carbon on a large scale as well. The problem is humanity’s collective blindness.
Tell me how many truly socialist (do you mean communist?) systems are there in the world right now?
China is now capitalist, and the role of the socialist CCP is to try to moderate the massive corruption, greed, exploitation of the poor, and repair the environmental damage that come with it. Although China is blamed for being the biggest CO2 emitter, its historical contribution to world emissions is very minor compared to the West.
Russia is not socialist or communist and has not been that way for many years. In fact when it came out of communism the worst ravages of capitalism and greed saw the establishment of a rich and corrupt oligarchy. Putin replaced it with another rich capitalist oligarchy.
So where are all these socialist countries that are not capitalist as well? Cuba? Vietnam?
Humanity’s collective blindness has been heavily stimulated by capitalism, neoliberalism and its partner of ‘me’ based consumerism. Now we could say it’s junk consumerism, because a great deal of products have such short lives and are such rubbish that they cause a secondary problem in terms of waste, pollution, workplace exploitation in developing countries and the third world. All of these products also produce enormous amounts of CO2, methane, and many other industrial greenhouse gases. Many people are engaged in making just a rubbish problem these days some of the products are so ephemeral.
A great many people in this world would be better off being paid to do nothing because the products they make cost us more in the end due to pollution, and CO2 emissions.
The problem with capitalism, and particularly neo-Liberalism is that it’s only objective is making profits.
Communism is not more than a never-realized idea, socialism has been approached but hardly achieved, while capitalism has and continues to be a road toward fascism. Surpassing all the “isms” is the reality of constant to near-constant wars. Between 1740 and 1897, there were 230 wars and revolutions in Europe. https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/out-the-darkness/201403/the-psychology-war#:~:text=Between%201740%20and%201897%2C%20there,themselves%20with%20their%20military%20expenditure.&text=In%20reality%2C%20the%20death%20toll%20from%20wars%20rose%20sharply.
How does that answer to what your original claim was, and my reply to it?
You say first:
“Socialist and other economic systems are emitting carbon on a large scale as well”.
In other words socialist systems exists because they emit carbon on large scale too.
But then you reply: “Communism is not more than a never-realized idea, socialism has been approached but hardly achieved, while capitalism has and continues to be a road toward fascism.”
Agreed Peter. Perhaps avoiding the term ‘Capitalism’ and associated [bun] fights will help. Instead we might all be able to agree that we need to direct our money to sustainable ways of generating power and goods and services.