This post by Joseph Green, well done, points out to me what narrow silos we work within. I have been unconsciously assuming that people on Pen-L would know about the close links between the big environmental groups like NRDC and EDF with the giant corporations whose behavior they are actually abetting.
In the world I work in, the behavior of the big environmental groups is common knowledge, though many of the people I work with still try to cooperate with them in one way or another. In the solar book “WHO OWNS THE SUN” by Dan Berman and Johnny O’Connor, one of the chapters is about "Wall Street environmentalism" and spells out the connection between big money and big environmentalists. That book was published in 1997. I put Mark Dowie on to the Energy Foundation, one of the most harmful organizations and he wrote a piece about it and later turned the issues into a book out of the MIT Press. Jeff St. Clair, well before he was at Counterpunch, was exposing NRDC’s behavior. Counterpunch more recently has published exposes of Bill McKibben/350.ORG ties to big money environmentalism. I could go on — but the point is that the bad behavior of big money environmentalism has been well known by people encountering their behavior in routine work. I would add PEW to the list of harmful agents of what Joseph Green labels bourgeois environmental organizations. That label is perhaps a flattering euphemism for their actual behavior. An insider, Gus Speth, one of the founders of NRDC, who had a number of big jobs in Democratic administrations and became a Dean at Yale of its environmental school, seems to have recanted to some extent recently and written a couple of books criticizing capitalism but wanting a nicer version rather than an end to it. A lot of small environmental and consumer groups tiptoe around the knowledge because what meager funds ever come their way are tied back into foundations and big environmental groups. And yet, it appears that although some on this list would know all this and more, others, working on other issues are not familiar with this. I have been unconscious of this disconnect. It seems obvious that Mayor Bloomberg, Mayor of the city that partially went underwater in the hurricane and whose own fortune is tied to Wall Street which was shut down in that hurricane, would be concerned about rising sea levels. What's the surprise in that? He's probably against Ebola as well. Part of the problem for all is that it is very hard to conceive of a new society and how to get there. So a lot of people who think of themselves as "on the left" nevertheless can only think of market and technological solutions. A carbon tax, or cap and trade in its various incarnations and then renewable energy. There are people that push regulation, and others that would have the government fund energy research and then new energy producing capacity. But even on the left there isn't much that goes beyond solutions that capitalism can easily accommodate. Naomi Klein at the end of her book mentions the guaranteed income (easily accommodated by capitalism), and earlier in the book cites one person who himself tentatively mentions cutting working hours in the next two or three decades, and that obscure mention was years ago. So for all her research in a powerful book, she didn't come across anything by Tom Walker nor did she discover many others who are writing about cutting working time as an environmental step. In my own view, to ride this hobby horse to the end, the only step that deals with global warming and confronts capitalism straight on is cutting working time. Gene On Nov 23, 2014, at 9:31 PM, Joseph Green <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> On 11/22/14 9:31 AM, Carrol Cox wrote: >>>> >>>> The fact that former Mayor Bloomberg could join the climate march ought > to >>>> generate some caution. >>> >>> [Louis Proyect wrote] I agree with Carrol. We need a communistic climate > change movement led >>> by fighting detachments of an aroused proletariat. >> > [Marvin Gandall wrote] >> Not to mention, on a more serious note, that not all capitalists >> outside the coal, gas and oil industries are wedded to fossil fuels and >> unconcerned about their disruptive and potentially catastrophic effects. >> Bloomberg is a prominent spokesperson of this growing wing of the >> bourgeoisie. If solar and other alternative energy prices continue to fall >> in line with advanced technology and more widespread adoption and become >> more cost-effective and safer than environmentally destructive forms of >> energy, there's no reason to suppose today's capitalists would not do what >> previous generations of capitalists have done and move to superior forms of >> energy. It's not an inevitable development, but neither can it be ruled >> out. > > Carrol Cox's opposition to the environmental movement is completely wrong, > would doom the left to impotence, and would increase the danger of > environmental collapse. But it's also wrong to be complacent about the > bourgeois wing of the environmental movement. Yes, even today a section of > the bourgeoisie is concerned about the environment, and more will be in the > future. But establishment environmentalism has put forward futile marketplace > solutions. Indeed, it's measures aren't simply weak or inadequate, but some > of them have made things worse. > > * There's the corn ethanol fiasco. This is an example of a section of the > bourgeoisie realizing it can make a profit from certain measures, and it has > been a fiasco. > > * There was the promotion of biofuel from palm oil. This has helped > accelerate the devastation of the rain forests. > > * There is cap and trade, which was a fiasco in Europe under Kyoto. > > * There is the carbon offset program, which isn't simply weak or ineffective, > but has done environmental harm in various ways. > > * There is the promotion of nuclear power by various bourgeois > environmentalists. > > * There is even the promotion of geo-engineering, which promises disasters of > its own. Why let global warming destroy the planet, when the bourgeoisie can > do it directly with geo-engineering? > > * And so on... > > One of the positive points of Naomi Klein's book was the chapter on "Big > Green", the large bourgeois environmental organizations. These organizations > even have financial deals with the fossil fuel companies. The more I see the > issue of bourgeois environmentalism avoided in this discussion, the more I > appreciate that Naomi Klein devotes some attention to it and is angry about > it. > > Another useful exposure of bourgeois environmentalism is in the book "Green > gone wrong: Dispatches from the front lines of eco-capitalism" by Heather > Rogers. She shows, for example, concretely how various fair trade plans, > supposed to be ecologically friendly, don't help either the small peasant > producer or the environment. > > Neither Klein nor Rogers have a clear plan on how to build an effective > section of the environmental movement consciously independent of Big Green. > But their books help show why this is needed. The left must not simply > participate in the environmental movement, but build up a working-class > section of the movement, which doesn't simply cheer the bourgeois > environmentalists on, but has a separate program for what measures need to be > taken in order to effectively fight the environmental crisis. > > So far, even the more radical and militant section of the environmental > movement, a section which has carried out many excellent actions, generally > won't directly take on Big Green and has connections with the bourgeois > environmentalists through Al Gore or various foundations, etc. Even the > section that criticizes market measures in general, generally supports the > carbon tax as supposedly something else. This amounts, in practice, to a > tacit alliance with the market fundamentalism of the bourgeois > environmentalists. Such environmentalists as Timothy Flannery (who was a > Green Party activist at one time, but I don't know what has become of him) > worry about planning being a "carbon dictatorship" (Flannery's term). The > major emphasis on setting the "carbon price" is an attempt to avoid the > "carbon dictatorship" through a price mechanism; it is a tacit alliance (and > sometimes an open and direct alliance) with bourgeois environmentalism; and > it means evading the need to fight neo-liberalism. (The one correct thing > about Shane Mage's comment was that he directly showed the market nature of > the carbon tax.) > > Carrol Cox concludes from the need to oppose bourgeois environmentalism that > all environmentalism is bourgeois, and that we can and should ignore it. That > is a fatal error. In fact, Carrol Cox's abstention from the environmental > movement would turn it over to the hands of bourgeois environmentalism, and > thus maximize the chance of environmental catastrophe. The left should take > part in the the environmental movement, but it should develop a working-class > section of the environmental movement, working-class not just in composition > but in its opposition to the mistaken orientations of Big Green. > > -- Joseph Green > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
