Carbon tax and Cap & Trade are the same in the sense that they are
"the market plus techology" as the response to global warming.
In other words, "Climate change is frightening but the market and a
few breakthroughs in technology provide hope." Horror, then hope.
As Richard Wolff remarked in another context "The great practical
importance of policy is to shape events by restricting the public
discourse about what steps are appropriate to deal with problems ... "
Carbon tax and Cap & Trade -- let's assume contrary to reality that
they will reduce emissions as necessary -- are business as usual,
with clean energy.
The advocates of technology promise that growth will roar on. In an
often-cited article in Scientific American (August 21, 2006)
describing "climate wedges" that will save us, the authors, Socolow
and Pacala assert "Economic growth will be maintained, the poor and
the rich will both be richer." The EPA analysed last year's Lieberman-
Warner cap & trade bill and found that with the bill US GDP will grow
80% from 2010 to 2030. Very reassuring to anybody worried about next
week's rent and groceries but madness all the same.
The responses to climate change are all from people facing in the
wrong direction. The issue is not how to get clean energy, it is "How
do we reduce the need for energy?" And the answer lies in cutting
consumption through cutting hours of work. It can at the same time
correct the US income distribution. This is scalable and at the same
time is the only US policy that can positively affect developing
countries.
Gene Coyle
On Feb 6, 2009, at 12:45 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Doug Henwood wrote:
Yeah, we can't do anything about climate change until the revolution.
So I guess that means we're doomed.
Doug
_______________________________________________
Excuse me, Doug. If you had bothered to read the articles I linked
to, you
would notice that I argue that we must do something prior to the
revolution,
and that I put forward a program for that. Indeed, I argue that it's
precisely the advocates of neo-liberal measures, such as the carbon
trading
and the carbon tax, who are afraid of the measures that are needed
now, and
regard them as a "carbon dictatorship".
In the introduction to my article denouncing cap and trade, I write
that:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
. But the environmental crisis is upon us now, while capitalism
still exists.
Major steps will have to be taken soon, while the present capitalist
ruling
classes are still in power. As the failure of carbon emission
markets to
solve the problem becomes evident, they may take steps to implement
carbon
taxes; and as the failure of carbon taxes becomes evident, they will
have to
move to some type of regulation of production. True, the capitalists
will
likely wait until their hands are forced by a series of spectacular
environmental disasters, and by then the situation will be quite
desperate.
But the time is coming closer when the capitalists will have to
abandon neo-
liberal orthodoxy, and move towards a regulated capitalism.
. But this will not mean that the capitalist governments will have
become
socialist. Neo-liberal market fundamentalism is not the only form of
capitalism: capitalism has always oscillated back and forth between
periods
of greater and lesser regulation, and even now different capitalist
countries
have varying amounts of regulation and social programs. The planning
that the
capitalist governments introduce will be done by capitalist
agencies, and
indeed the world economy will be subject to imperialist agencies and
the
strongest imperialist powers. Capitalist planning will seek to have
the
masses pay for the continued profits of the corporations in the name
of
planning, just as now it makes the masses pay in the name of the
free market.
It will be up to the masses to fight to ensure that not only does the
planning truly address the environmental problems, but that the well-
being of
the masses is protected.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the course of the article, I go into the record of cap and trade,
which
has been a fiasco in Europe, and elaborate what is really needed. Of
course,
we need measures that actually do something positive, and are not mere
pretense. If we support measures that are a mere pretense, on the
grounds
that a pretense is better than doing nothing, than we will deserve the
revenge that the environment will exact upon us.
-- Joseph Green
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