Josep wrote, trying to characterize my logic: > Your logic seems to be that, since the problem has to be > addressed now, under the present society, therefore we > have to select something, whether cap and trade or the > carbon tax, that is realistic according to the present > market fundamentalist politicians and corporate leaders.
In my view, a carbon tax is much better than cap and trade, but the best policy would be carbon rationing as developed in the UK. Some capitalist policies do actually work. For instance feed-in tariffs are both effective and cost-effective. These are the things we have to fight for. You want to leap from market fundamentalism directly to socialized production. I think we should go from market fundamentalism to a regulated capitalism. This is what the mass movement will want to do. It is not obvious how capitalism should be regulated, but there are lots of examples out there, some successful and some not. Here we have to do our homework and come with the right advice what works. This way there will be a learning process until the activists (and, it is hoped, the workers involved in this struggle also) will know much better what do than the capitalists. This is an important precondition for expropriation of the capitalists. If we were able to take power without this precondition we would have nobody to run our electric utilities and transmission lines and refineries etc., which coal-fired power plants to shut down first, what to do to prevent the collapse of the grid, etc. We would depend on the engineers running them now. Or the engineers would smash the computers with axes and leave us with inoperable hardware. By this time, when enough participants in the mass movement have anough skills that they could possibly run production, it will also become obvious whether capitalist regulation works. You say it cannot work, I say we cannot know where the limits are without trying it out. If it doesn't work despite best practices within the capitalist system, this will be the time when expropriation is on the agenda, this is the time when everybody understands that expropriation is necessary. It is hard to predict how things will evolve, but here is a possible scenario. Some capitalists may try to sabotage the switch to green energy, or perhaps they will shut down their businesses because the rate of profits is too low. Their businesses should be nationalized if they do. Others may go bankrupt, and instead of bailing them out they should be nationalized too. Or their government may be so discredited that a Chavez-like reform government will come into power. Or the mass movement itself will take power and Bill McKibben will be our next president. Only one thing is almost certain: the revolution will not be like the Russian or Chinese revolutions. Hans _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
