Pure Wind
The enthusiasm of certain environmentalists for renewables in general and wind-farms in particular is admirable, in so far as it goes, but without a fundamental change in economic purposes and the way we live our lives, the cause is hopeless. Where once we looked at organising and applying the new productive forces in a new socialist order, now we seem to be reduced to planetary engineering within an exploitative and ecologically destructive capital economy.
The problem is the expansionary capitalist economy organised around an accumulative dynamic. This ensures that there will always be an energy ‘gap’, with ever increasing demands for energy threatening to outrun supply. There is something seriously awry in the notion of an environmental politics which is concerned to supply the capital system with its energy. Renewable energy in these terms means a renewable capitalism, the continuation of the very system that is digging up the planet, wasting resources and leaving an environmental wasteland. We know that any gains made in energy efficiency are quickly eclipsed in absolute terms as a result of the growth which follows. Environmentalists are in danger of becoming a modern day hygiene movement, seen in the same manner of the nineteenth century reforms which cleaned up the industrial economy and gave it a new lease of life. Such environmentalism becomes the green wing of the very techno-urban industrial system that is destroying the planet. There is little to be gained from generating more ecologically efficient ways of exploiting nature.
There is increasing evidence that human activity has already tipped our finely balanced ecosystem beyond the point of no return. As the human species hurtles towards a nightmare of its own making, attempts to place the destructive economic system on a more energy efficient basis seem somewhat misplaced. It seems obvious that we should be looking to reduce our energy demands rather than increase energy efficiency alone. And reduction can only be achieved if we change our economic purposes, that is, if we uproot the accumulative imperative and move to a sustainable economic system.
Scientists are warning that the Arctic ice-cap will be gone within the decade. The very thing we were told just a couple of years ago couldn’t happen, is happening, and a lot quicker than the most ‘alarmist’ scientists had anticipated. The record melt in the Arctic, along with other climate-change mechanisms, will inflict massive damage. As positive feedback kicks in, the process will be irresistible and irreversible. The effects will involve massive methane release as the frozen tundra melts, widespread flooding, reduced fish size and plummeting fish stocks as a consequence of rising ocean acidity, droughts, crop failures, weather storms, heavy rain and flooding, pandemic infections immune to antibiotics…. And that’s just for starters.
A few years ago I heard James Lovelock make the claim that the planet is overpopulated to the factor of seven. I’m probably misquoting here, because I didn’t really understand the scientific language in which the argument was couched. I soon worked out, though, that Lovelock meant that there are 6 billion too many human beings on the planet. That probably includes me, I thought. Actually, what matters is not the numbers of people but their impact. Oddly enough, economics values the people who do the most ecological damage more than the people who live lightly on the land. The economist JK Galbraith used to tell the joke of the man who died. As he reached the Gates of Heaven he was stopped by St Peter, who asked ‘and what did you do to increase the GNP?’ That question can be rephrased as ‘what did you do to destroy the planet?’
The problem is that there are far too many people doing far too much to expand the economy at the expense of the planet’s ecology.
It takes every kind of people. A happy habitat makes for happy birds. It’s all about creating the conditions for flourishing.
In the context of the eco-catastrophe outlined above, a substantial decline in the world population is inevitable. Erecting power stations in beauty spots and along whole coastlines won’t make a jot of difference without a substantial change in the way we live our lives and earn our living.
The phrase ‘window of opportunity’ is revealing in its frequent repetition. It means that the opportunities continue to be missed. One day, the window will no longer be open. Governments have now squandered nearly all of the time they have had to address climate change. Politicians find it impossible to escape the short-term populism of the electoral cycle. Most of all, however, there is the inability of government to govern with respect to ‘the economy’. The state does not determine, it is determined. The state has to facilitate the process of private accumulation as a condition of its own power and legitimacy. Ralph Miliband wrote well on the structural and systemic power that capital exercises over government and society (Miliband in Miliband and Saville eds 1965:280; Miliband 1977:72/3). In this respect, there is little chance that government will be able to autonomise itself from the very economic system that is destroying the planet.
To make a difference, governments need to commit themselves to substantial programmes of investment in renewable energy. The returns on public investment in solar energy alone would be immense. Massive solar power generation plants in the sunny regions of the planet could provide more than enough energy to displace the use of fossil fuels completely within 20 years, offering a secure and sustainable energy source if at the same time we take steps to reduce our energy needs.
Calm Oceans - The sun searching for the heart of the world.
We need international green infrastructure projects financed by public funding now. Those who say it cannot be done should give some thought to the $1 trillion plus which the world currently spends on arms. We need a new concept of security, one based on strengthening relations between people and nations, not unravelling those relations and setting people against each other. Ecologically, we all live in the One World, politically, we live apart. It’s time to find the good at the heart of Nature.
The great barrier reef
The Heart of Mother Nature
Human beings are world class at believing anything in order to avoid facing reality. However, if we refuse to face the truth of the situation, as revealed by the best work of the scientists, and if we remain in a state of denial, then the time will come when nothing is salvageable and no-one can be saved. The planet will shake off a species so ill-fitted to its environment and rearrange itself easily without our presence. It’s time for reconciliation.