Gar Lipow wrote: > I posted > >My newest post on Grist is up: http://tinyurl.com/deadbill .... > > Please, I'd really appreciate people logging on to Grist (very > annoying registration) and leaving comments. Criticism is fine. I'm > trying to get them to promote my post more, and more than zero > comments would help. > > -- OK, I've left a comment, and I hope it will be of help in attracting attention to your article. For those who don't make it to Grist, my comment went as follows: -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Gar Lipow, whose writings are always worthy of serious attention, makes some good points in his discussion of the bill, but I don't think he takes them far enough. He points out correctly that the rationale for the miserable congressional bill, and for the haggling around it, centered on putting a price on carbon. He notes that this approach was nonsense, and points out that "A serious policy to end global warming would not focus on an emissions price." He points out that the policy should instead be centered on direct steps to transform the physical and social infrastructure, promote renewable energy and conservation, etc. These are important points. However, he forsees that "Emissions pricing could follow down the road". But emissions pricing is based on the idea that market measures can be the main way of solving the problem. The big debates between the carbon tax and cap and trade, and between cap and trade and cap and auction, etc., are based on the idea that the "true pricing" of carbon emissions will orient market forces to solve the problem. This approach, despite the good intentions of a number of its advocates, will result in putting the greatest burden on the working masses and the least burden on corporations; the greatest hardship for those with the least influence, and the least pressure on those with the most influence; and it will always end up that the "invisible hand" of the market will act in ways that weren't anticipated. No doubt taxes will always play a role in government policy, but the attempt to get major progress through orienting the market via emissions pricing is likely to lead to fiasco. Gar also makes an important point about how the corporations can get away with anything without consequences, and engage in impunity in practices that slaughter workers as well as devastating the environment. But this point is vitiated when he says that the mainstream environmental groups are currently contemplating doing the right thing. As a matter of fact, these groups have currently covered themselves in shame with respect to the BP oil spill. It is an open scandal that some take money from the oil corporations and other environmental criminals, and others engage in joint lobbying in Congress with them. There is no change in this. Thus they are still backing market measures as the way to solve the problem, and they will also ensure that direct governmental measures are tailored to what can "realistically" be supported by the corporations. If anything, these stands by the mainstream environmental groups reinforce the industry capture of the government bodies that are supposedly regulating them. It isn't sufficient to advocate direct government measures to aid the environment. It's necessary to build a working-class wing of the environmental movement that will advocate that will focus fire on the corporations and insist that the nature of government planning be change. It is necessary to demand that only that there be an end to the revolving door between industry and the regulatory bodies, but that the planning and enforcement be transparent and that the working masses have a role in planning and in enforcement of that planning. Only a tiny bit of this can take place under capitalism, since the capitalist marketplace is based on the subordination of the working class. But if some steps in this direction aren't taken, environmental plans will always be insufficient to solve the question, and will likely end up hated by the majority of the population, who will see the corporations and government agencies use green rhetoric to crush them. The problem is not just that the mainstream environmental groups are carrying out a mistaken policy, but that they represent a certain class position -- that of bourgeois and neo-liberal environmentalism. Bourgeois environmentalism has repeatedly shown its impotence in the face of the present environmental crisis, and it's necessary that there be work to consciously build up an environmental movement that is working-class both in the base which it appeals to for support, and in its idea of economic and environmental policy. The present impasse of the congressional bill isn't simply a policy mistake: it is the bankruptcy of neo-liberal methods, which are still being supported by the bourgeois environmentalists. It's not enough to fight the mistaken measures of the neo-liberal establishment groups: it's necessary to fight for a class stand in the environmental movement as well. Joseph Green _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
