Last year we reported a talk he gave to a posh gathering in London, chaired by no less a personage than Prince Phillip, in which he said only “flat earthers” disagree with his view that only population reduction can save the planet. Contraception, he said, “is the humane way, the powerful option which allows all of us to deal with the problem, if we collectively choose to do so.”

We haven’t previously mentioned that Sir David is also a patron of World Land Trust. This week he spoke on behalf of that group to yet another posh meeting in London, this one attended by “lawyers, city investors and business people.” (The meeting is reported in the UK Guardian.)

He repeated his message that Third World overbreeding is a huge threat, but this time he was less sanguine about the efficacy of “the humane way.”

In fact, he said, it just isn’t possible to stop population growth in time to save the planet. “Nothing we can do will stop that increase. We may be able to slow it, but stop it in our lifetimes we cannot.”

Since the population bomb can’t be stopped, Attenborough says we need to focus on “making sure mankind doesn’t spread willy nilly over every square yard of the globe.”

How? By buying large tracts of rainforest, and converting them into private wildlife reserves.

Two questions arise immediately. Who will pay for this land? And what happens to the people who live there?

The answer to the first question is simple. Attenborough thinks big businesses should contribute the needed cash to World Land Trust, which will buy the land and hand it over to local NGOs that promise to keep it safe.

Some might object that business doesn’t have a great record of environmental protection, but Attenborough is more than willing to slather greenwash over any corporation that makes a tax deductible donation. Businesses may have defiled the earth in the past, but they just didn’t know better. Today, he says, “Wealth empowers, and businesses have by no means been slow in helping. We’ve gone to multinationals over and over again.”

As for the second question – WLT preserves are no-go areas for those overbreeding locals. According to the WLT website, donors may be allowed to visit as ecotourists, but no one else gets in. “If there is occasional incursion into the forests this is quickly dealt with by the park wardens who are familiar with the borders.”

WLT is all in favor of REDD+, the UN-sanctioned program to privatize Third World forests and use them for carbon trading. In a recent statement, WLT president John Burton described the plan as “by far the best option on the table for raising significant funds for biodiversity conservation.”

The people who actually live in those forests, in contrast, say that REDD+ “threatens the survival of Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities and could result in the biggest land grab of all time.”

Through Optimum Population Trust, Attenborough works to prevent poor people from coming to England. And through World Land Trust, he works to prevent them from living in their homelands.
And his rich donors, who do more to destroy the earth every day than his Third World victims do in their lifetimes, get tax deductions and carbon credits.

Population of world ‘could grow to 15bn by 2100′
“Nearly 7 billion people now inhabit planet but projections that number will double this century have shocked academics“

The headline in the Daily Mail, Britain’s largest circulation daily, was even more sensationalist:

“World population will more than double to 15 billion by 2100, says UN“

The Guardian story tells us:

“The United Nations will warn this week that the world’s population could more than double to 15 billion by the end of this century, putting a catastrophic strain on the planet’s resources unless urgent action is taken to curb growth rates….

“That figure is likely to shock many experts as it is far higher than many current estimates. A previous UN estimate had expected the world to have more than 10 billion people by 2100; currently, there are nearly 7 billion.”

The Guardian‘s editors repeated the claim in an editorial on October 23. “Without radical action, the UN now predicts the world’s population doubling again before the end of this century.”

Population Matters – the brand-name recently adopted by the arch-populationists of Optimum Population Trust – quickly posted the Guardian October 22 article on its website.

Populationists around the world have jumped on the wagon: less than 48 hours after the Guardian article first appeared, a Google search for “15 Billion by 2100″ found “about 10,900″ results.

But the Guardian article isn’t true. The UN isn’t releasing a new population forecast this week, experts aren’t shocked, and there is virtually no possibility that global population will ever reach 15 Billion.

For starters, the United Nations Population Fund doesn’t compile population statistics or produce population forecasts. Any statistics it publishes come from a separate UN agency, the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social affairs. The Population Division’s report, World Population Prospects, 2010 Revision, was published six months ago – another isn’t due until 2013.

In this year’s report, the Population Division says that if current population trends continue, the world’s population will be 9.3 Billion in 2050, and 10.1 Billion in 2100. Their projections stop there, but if the trends they describe continue, world population growth will stop early in the 2100s.

So where does 15 Billion in 2100 come from?

The 10.1 Billion figure, called the Mid-Range projection, is based on a careful, country-by-country analysis, combining the latest statistics with the Division’s considered assumptions about long-term trends. The UN has been making these calculations since 1950, and its projections have consistently been off by less than 4%.

But to show that the results aren’t certain, the Population Division also produces two other projections by simply assuming that each adult woman will have 0.5 more or fewer children than the detailed Mid-Range projection. The choice of 0.5 seems to be entirely arbitrary: I’ve been unable to find any explanation of why the UN uses it it instead of a larger or smaller number.
This year, that calculation produced projections for 2100 that range from a low of 6 Billion to a high of more than 15 Billion, as shown in this graph. (click image for a larger version.)

The highest line assumes that fertility doesn’t change at all from now on, taking us to 27 Billion in 2100. Not even the most extreme populationists quote that number.

It’s important to understand that the 6 Billion to 15 Billion range is not comparable to the “margin of error” figure often reported in statistical studies. No probability whatsover is attached to it – it is just the result of a very crude calculation using an arbitrary adjustment.

In fact, the chance that population will reach 15 Billion this century is very close to zero. For that to happen, global fertility rates would have to be 20 to 25 percent higher than the UN’s best estimates, every single year for the next 90 years. Countries where birth rates have been falling for years would have to experience nine unprecedented decades of baby boom. Global birth rates, which have been declining for half a century, would have to reverse direction immediately, and stay high until the next century.

As noted above, previous UN Mid-Range projections have been accurate within 4%. Reaching 15 Billion in 2100 would be 50% off the mark. That’s extremely unlikely, to say the least.

The Guardian report is sloppy journalism, by reporters and editors who likely aren’t familiar with population projections.

But Optimum Population Trust claims to be a source of population expertise. For them to highlight the Guardian‘s grossly inaccurate article qualifies as either ignorance or deliberate misrepresentation. Either way, their judgement obviously can’t be trusted.

Unfortunately, as Mark Twain said, a lie can travel round the world while the truth is still lacing up its boots. Eventually the truth will win, but I expect we’ll see the “15 Billion by 2100″ lie quite a lot for a while.

I might take this a little more seriously if the money were used to reduce the birth rate among rich Brits. Just think how much lower England’s emissions would be if aristocrats and bank directors were limited to one spoiled child each. How many Bentleys and Jaguars could be taken off the road if the Royal Family stopped reproducing altogether?

The Royal Wedding confirms my judgement.

The New Zealand environmental research group Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research has prepared a rough estimate of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the merger of the Windsor and Middleton families.

The results indicate that the activities on the day of the wedding could be responsible for an estimated 2,808 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) in greenhouse gases, for the scope of emissions calculated. Emissions due to travel by crowds lining the streets might amount to another 3,957 tonnes of CO2e and the Royal Airforce flyover might add another 1.95 tonnes of CO2e.

Total: 6,767 tonnes.

Landcare emphasizes that this is a very rough estimate, compiled as a “fun exercise.”

What’s more, their estimates aren’t complete: the London Telegraph points out that the estimated Royal Wedding emissions don’t include “emissions from the millions of tons of bunting, cheap Union Jacks and confetti flooding the streets on the day, or the flights of the international media.”

Nor, we can add, did Landcare include emissions from police operations, helicopter surveillance, pre-emptive arrests of dissidents, or other actions associated with what the Independent calls “the biggest security operation in a generation.”�

But Landcare’s estimate is high enough. The company says that emissions associated with the Royal wedding were 1230 times greater than an entire year’s emissions from an average UK household. It’s even 12 times the annual emissions produced by Buckingham Palace.

Landcare doesn’t say so, but in one day the Royal family was responsible for pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than 67,700 people in Madagascar produce in an entire year.

That puts the entire “too many people” argument into proper perspective. Anyone who really wants to reduce global emissions should be campaigning to abolish the English monarchy.

But some writers identify a different cause. Bonus-seeking executives, corrupt politicians and oil-hungry generals all played a role, but they were only front men for the real villains – consumers.

“Who’s Really to Blame for the BP Oil Spill? We Are,” by U.S. green activist Dave Chameides, is typical:

“The bottom line is, no matter who did their work poorly, or who shirked their responsibilities, at the end of the day, we are the ones who are responsible for the disaster at hand.

“That’s right, we are the ones responsible.

“BP, like any other oil company, is in the petroleum game for one reason and one reason only: money. And where does that money come from? It comes from us.” [1]

Similarly, a Guardian article by British academic Mark Coeckelbergh was headlined, “We’re all to blame for the oil spill.”

“Moreover, and perhaps most important, we should not only consider responsibility for oil production but also for oil consumption. Business and finance are not isolated from our own choices. Companies such as BP can only do what they do because we want what they sell. We’re all too happy with cheap oil. …

“As consumers, we continue to depend on oil in various ways and therefore maintain the oil-hungry system that makes oil companies drill in deep water and undertake other risky activities. “[2]

These are just two of many such articles. [3] All promote a simple lesson: If only “we” would wean ourselves of our oil addiction, then “they” would stop destroying the environment. If “we” would just use less oil, then “they” wouldn’t have to drill in environmentally sensitive areas like the Gulf of Mexico.

As Al Gore wrote a few years ago: “All of us contribute to climate change through the daily choices we make … you can begin to take action and work toward living a carbon-neutral life.” [4]

Buy green products, drive less and save the world.

Such views rest on the implicit assumption that corporations – indeed the capitalist economy as a whole – are driven by consumers’ desires and choices, as displayed in the market. Economist Mark Perry of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, explains:

“Consumers are the kings and queens of the market economy, and ultimately they reign supreme over corporations and their employees. … In a market economy, it is consumers, not businesses, who ultimately make all of the decisions. When they vote in the marketplace with their dollars, consumers decide which products, businesses, and industries survive — and which ones fail. ”[5]

Perry is echoing the opinions of the influential libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises:

“When we call a capitalist society a consumers’ democracy we mean that the power to dispose of the means of production, which belongs to the entrepreneurs and capitalists, can only be acquired by means of the consumers’ ballot, held daily in the marketplace.” [6]

This view, usually called consumer sovereignty, is widely held, not just by conservative economists but by commentators of many political stripes. It is conventional wisdom in the worst sense of the term, a dominant superstition that is assumed to be obviously true and so is never questioned.

But there are many reasons to believe that the conventional wisdom is wrong. The following are just four of them.

The market is manipulated

Fifty-three of the one hundred largest economies in the world are corporations. Exxon Mobil alone is larger than 180 countries. [7] In 2000, Fortune magazine reported that the 500 largest industrial corporations had revenues equal to two-thirds of all U.S. production. [8]

Those corporate behemoths constantly use their immense economic power to influence consumers’ choices. As a result, the balance of information and persuasion in the consumer goods marketplace is overwhelmingly weighted in favor of sellers and against buyers, for corporations and against consumers.

Michael Löwy writes:

“Contrary to the claim of free-market ideology, supply is not a response to demand. Capitalist firms usually create the demand for their products by various marketing techniques, advertising tricks, and planned obsolescence. Advertising plays an essential role in the production of consumerist demand by inventing false “needs” and by stimulating the formation of compulsive consumption habits.”[9]

Michael Dawson argues convincingly that advertising has to be understood as part of a much larger marketing process that aims “to make commoners’ off-the-job habits better serve corporate bottom lines.”

“Big businesses in the United States now spend well over a trillion dollars a year on marketing. This is double Americans’ combined annual spending on all public and private education, from kindergartens through graduate schools. It also works out to around four thousand dollars a year for each man, woman, and child in the country. …”

Dawson calls this process a form of “class struggle from above.”

“On our side of such struggles, within broad limits – for example, we must eat, drink, and sleep – we have the power to choose what we do with our free time, and we fight to make that time as fulfilling as possible. Meanwhile, big businesses have the power to implant objects, images, messages, and material infrastructures in our off-the-job behaviour settings, and, thereby, to influence the choices we make in our personal lives. …”[10]

As liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith insisted, the immense sums spent on advertising “must be integrated with the theory of consumer demand. They are too big to be ignored.” This, he said, “means recognizing that wants are dependent on production…. [which] actively through advertising and related activities, creates the wants it seeks to satisfy.”[11]

This is not to suggest that consumers are helpless victims of all-powerful marketing monsters. Consumers frequently resist being manipulated, and specific advertising campaigns often fail. But by spending a trillion dollars a year on marketing, corporations don’t just promote individual products: they set the terms under which the market operates, define the range of permissible choices, and promote the constant expansion of needs and purchases that their profits depend on. They wouldn’t spend the money if it wasn’t working.

Consumers aren’t equal

Competition among consumers is also grossly unequal. “Consumer democracy” is rendered meaningless by the fact that a few consumers have most of the votes, because they have most of the money.

It’s sometimes argued that inequality of wealth doesn’t matter, because the rich are vastly outnumbered – our combined wealth lets the rest of us outvote the rich in the market. That sounds good, but it just isn’t true. The rich don’t just have more money than us as individuals, they have more than us collectively.

A recent study of the global distribution of household wealth, published by the prestigious World Institute for Development Economics Research, revealed just how much more the rich own than the rest of us.

“The richest 2 per cent of adult individuals own more than half of all global wealth, with the richest 1 per cent alone accounting for 40 per cent of global assets.

“The corresponding figures for the top 5 per cent and the top 10 per cent are 71 per cent and 85 per cent, respectively.

“In contrast, the bottom half of wealth holders together hold barely 1 per cent of global wealth.

“Members of the top decile are almost 400 times richer, on average, than the bottom 50 per cent, and members of the top percentile are almost 2,000 times richer.”[12]

Study after study leads to similar conclusions.

• In Australia, eleven very rich individuals own more than the country’s 800,000 poorest households combined. [13]
• The richest 5% of Americans own more than everyone else in the U.S. combined. [14]
• The 147 individuals who topped the 2002 Forbes “World’s Richest People” list had total wealth equal to the total annual income of three billion people, half the world’s population. [15]

Such gross inequality exposes the term “consumer democracy” for the fraud that it is. The capitalist market is a plutocracy: we all participate, but a tiny minority of very rich people has decisive influence.

Market choice is restricted

While consumers have some ability to choose among a variety of products, they can’t choose products that capitalists choose not to offer. Buyers face a “proffered world of micro-choices, where Ford versus Chevy is a live issue, but cars versus trains is most certainly not.” [16]

The market is also restricted by political, social and economic decisions – past and present – that few consumers have any ability to influence.

North America’s automobile-intensive culture, for example, is the product of a multi-pronged, multi-year campaign by the oil and automobile industries, beginning in the 1930s, to limit public transit, pour billions of public dollars into building roads, enforce zoning restrictions and building programs that encouraged urban sprawl – and at the same to promote the car as the quintessential symbol of success, freedom and modernity.

“Journalists never tire of pointing to the love of the automobile in the United States. But such ‘love’ is more often than not a kind of desperation in the face of extremely narrow options. The ways in which cars, roads, public transports systems (often notable by their absence), unban centers, suburbs, and malls have been constructed mean that people often have virtually no choice but to drive if they are to work and live.”[17]

There is even less choice when it comes to oil – it is so pervasive in every aspect of production and distribution that one analyst has justly called it “the stuff without which nothing else happens.” [18]

Indeed, it’s nearly impossible to buy a household product that isn’t partially or completely made from oil-derived chemicals. These are just a few examples:

Ammonia, Anesthetics, Antifreeze, Antihistamines, Antiseptics, Artificial limbs, Artificial Turf, Aspirin, Awnings, Balloons, Ballpoint Pens, Bandages, Basketballs, Bearing Grease, Boats, Cameras, Candles, Car Enamel, Cassettes, Caulking, CDs & DVDs, Clothes, Cold cream, Combs, Cortisone, Crayons, Curtains, Dashboards, Denture Adhesive, Dentures, Deodorant, Detergents, Dice, Diesel fuel, Dishes, Dresses, Drinking Cups, Dyes, Electric Blankets, Electrician’s Tape, Enamel, Epoxy, Eyeglasses, Fan Belts, Faucet Washers, Fertilizers, Fishing Boots, Fishing lures, Fishing Rods, Floor Wax, Folding Doors, Food Preservatives, Footballs, Glycerin, Golf Bags, Golf Balls, Guitar Strings, Hair Coloring, Hair Curlers, Hand Lotion, Heart Valves, House Paint, Ice Chests, Ice Cube Trays, Ink, Insect Repellent, Insecticides, Life Jackets, Linings, Linoleum, Lipstick, Luggage, Model Cars, Mops, Motor Oil, Nail Polish, Nylon Rope, Oil Filters, Paint, Paint Brushes, Paint Rollers, Panty Hose, Parachutes, Percolators, Perfumes, Petroleum Jelly, Pillows, Plastic Wood, Purses, Putty, Refrigerant, Roller Skates, Roofing, Rubber Cement, Rubbing Alcohol, Safety Glasses, Shag Rugs, Shampoo, Shaving Cream, Shoe Polish, Shoes, Shower Curtains, Skis, Soap, Solvents, Speakers, Sports Car Bodies, Sun Glasses, Surf Boards, Sweaters, Synthetic Rubber, Telephones, Tennis Rackets, Tents, Tires, Toilet Seats, Tool Boxes, Tool Racks, Toothbrushes, Toothpaste, Transparent Tape, Trash Bags, TV Cabinets, Umbrellas, Upholstery, Vaporizers, Vitamin Capsules, Water Pipes, Wheels, Yarn [19]

That’s not to say that people shouldn’t conserve, shouldn’t try to be as green as possible. Of course we should. But only radical social and economic change can possibly free us from dependence on oil. That choice isn’t available in the market.

Consumers don’t control production

In his article blaming consumers for the BP oil spill, Dave Chameides (who calls himself “Sustainable Dave”) recommends remedial action: “Stop driving your car one day a week … Ride your bike.”

That’s a good idea … but bear in mind that your bicycle’s tires, brake pads, handle grips, cable sheaths, lubricant, paint and other components are all made from oil. The metal was smelted, and the frame was formed and assembled, in factories that depend on oil. The finished bike was delivered to the shop in a diesel-powered truck driving on asphalt (oil again) roads.

The point, as environmental sociologist Alan Schnaiberg and his colleagues point out, is that even though consumers may decide what to buy from among the products that capitalists put on offer, they don’t get to choose how those products are made.

“While individual consumers may be the ultimate purchasers of some of the products of the new technologies, decisions about the allocation of technologies is the realm of production managers and owners. … [I]t is within the production process where the initial interaction of social systems with ecosystems occurs and where the key decisions about the nature of social system-ecosystem relationships are made…..

“The decision of which alternative forms of production will be offered consumers is not in their hands. It remains in the hands of a small minority of powerful individuals … who are empowered by their access to production capital. It is in those decisions where social systems (the producers’ access to capital and labor, and their assessment of potential liability, profitability, and marketability) and ecosystems (the producers’ access to natural resource inputs and ecosystem waste sinks) first interact.” [20]

Michael Dawson makes a similar point:

“Ordinary product users remain shut out of major economic decisions. Corporations plan, design, and sell goods and services according to their own profit requirements, without providing any means of subjecting basic productive priorities to popular debate and vote.” [21]

Even if we accept the farfetched idea that oil companies drill new wells only to please consumers, no one can reasonably suggest that consumers somehow forced BP to cut every possible corner, suborn regulators, violate safety guidelines, and worse. Those decisions were made in BP’s executive offices, and consumers had no say.

“In the end,” writes environmental policy professor Thomas Princen, “the idea of consumer sovereignty doesn’t add up. It is a myth convenient for those who would locate responsibility for social and environmental problems on the backs of consumers, absolving those who truly have market power and who write the rules of the game and who benefit the most.”[22]

Blaming Individuals for Capitalist Destruction

If the idea that consumers are in charge makes little sense for the capitalist economy as a whole, it is completely absurd for the oil industry. As New York Times columnist Bob Herbert points out, working people simply don’t count in this system:

“The fact that 11 human beings were killed in the Deepwater Horizon explosion (their bodies never found) has become, at best, an afterthought. BP counts its profits in the billions, and, therefore, it’s important. The 11 men working on the rig were no more important in the current American scheme of things than the oystermen losing their livelihoods along the gulf, or the wildlife doomed to die in an environment fouled by BP’s oil, or the waters that will be left unfit for ordinary families to swim and boat in.

“This is the bitter reality of the American present, a period in which big business has cemented an unholy alliance with big government against the interests of ordinary Americans, who, of course, are the great majority of Americans. The great majority of Americans no longer matter.”[23]

Nevertheless, as Michael Dawson writes, whenever mainstream thinkers comment on today’s social ills, they always “blame the little folk”

“Ordinary product users, who, because their purchases can be used to accuse them of choosing what they get, usually take all the transferred blame for capitalists’ costly, socially irrational actions.” [24]

t’s true that producers must sell their products, but the idea that consumers therefore control corporate behaviour is ideology, not fact. Immensely wealthy corporations decide what to produce and how to produce it. They spend billions to promote specific products and to protect their power. They allow us to choose – but only among the narrow range of options that they believe will be profitable.

In the Gulf, BP did what every capitalist corporation does – it kept costs down to keep profits up. Its irresponsible actions were bound to cause a disaster eventually – but if the company had lucked out this time, if the explosion hadn’t happened, BP’s executives and shareholders would have been rewarded for producing offshore oil more cheaply than more cautious competitors. That’s the way capitalism works.

The immediate cause of this particular disaster was BP’s greed for short-term profits. The long-term cause, of this and many other disasters, is an irrational grow-or-die economic system that is totally dependent on oil, on “the stuff without which nothing else happens.” A system in which private profit always takes precedence over the environment and human lives.

The journalists, pale greens and others who blame individual consumers are trivializing the problem and distracting attention from the social roots of environmental destruction. No matter how sincere they may be, they are making it harder to achieve real solutions.

In a previous post, I noted that the Canadian band Barenaked Ladies, like many rock bands worldwide, has been claiming that “carbon offsets” balance the greenhouse gases created during its tours. While not in the least doubting their sincerity, I recommended that they visit the spoof website Cheatneutral.

Now I can recommend something much more substantial and convincing. The Carbon Neutral Myth: Offset Indulgences for Your Climate Sins demonstrates that the carbon offset industry is “state of the art greenwash.” This report argues that offsets place disproportionate emphasis on individual lifestyles and carbon footprints, distracting attention from the wider, systemic changes and collective political action that needs to be taken to tackle climate change. Promoting more effective and empowering approaches involves moving away from the marketing gimmicks, celebrity endorsements, technological quick fixes, and the North/South exploitation that the carbon offsets industry embodies.Author Kevin Smith, a researcher with Carbon Trade Watch, argues that “the only effective way of dealing with climate change is to dramatically decrease our current rates of fossil fuel consumption. Offsets are providing a justification to maintain our carbon-intensive lifestyles, and delaying the profound changes we need to make in our societies.”

When companies like Climate Care and the Carbon Neutral Company sell the public carbon offsets, carbon savings expected to be made in the future are counted as savings made in the present. Offset companies give the idea that emissions are instantly “neutralised” when in fact the supposed “neutralisation” can take place over periods of up to a hundred years. Regular offsetting worsens the problem because the rate at which carbon emissions are ‘neutralised’ is far slower than the rate at which they are generated.

The Carbon Neutral Myth – Offset Indulgences for Your Climate Sins is published by Carbon Trade Watch, a project of the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute. It offers in-depth research and case studies in support of its argument that:

• Offset companies breed complacency by selling ‘peace of mind’ to consumers, distracting from the serious task of tackling unsustainable consumption patterns and business practices.
• Limited research on the climate benefits of tree plantations into the carbon cycle is sold as fact while the offset companies quantify this supposed benefit into a sellable commodity.
• Tree plantations marketed as beneficial for the climate have seen people in the South expelled from their lands.
• Projects that look great on the website or in the leaflet are often, in practice, mismanaged, ineffective or detrimental to the local communities who have to endure them.

The full text of The Carbon Neutral Myth: Offset Indulgences for Your Climate Sins is available online.

Let’s begin with a large question — what is ecosocialism?

ANGUS: Ecosocialism has grown out of two parallel political trends — the spread of Marxist ideas in the green movement and the spread of ecological ideas in the Marxist left. The result is a set of social and political goals, a growing body of ideas, and a global movement. Ecosocialism’s goal is to replace capitalism with a society in which common ownership of the means of production has replaced capitalist ownership, and in which the preservation and restoration of ecosystems will be central to all activity.

As a body of ideas, ecosocialism argues that ecological destruction is not an accidental feature of capitalism, it is built into the system’s DNA. The system’s insatiable need to increase profits — what’s been called “the ecological tyranny of the bottom line” — cannot be reformed away.

With that said, it is important to realize ecosocialist thought is not monolithic — it embodies many different views about theory and practice. For example, there is an ongoing debate about the view, advanced by some ecosocialist writers, that social movements have replaced the working class as the engine of social change.

Finally, ecosocialism is an anti-capitalist movement that varies a lot from place to place. In the imperialist countries, it is a current within existing socialist and green-left movements, seeking to win ecology activists to socialism, and to convince socialists of the vital importance of ecological issues and struggles. In the Third World there is a growing mass pro-ecology movement that incorporates socialist ideas — that’s especially true in Latin America, where anti-imperialist governments headed by Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Fidel Castro in Cuba, are pressing for strong anticapitalist, pro-environment measures.

What is the Ecosocialist International Network?

ANGUS: The Ecosocialist International Network was formed in October 2007, at a meeting in Paris that was attended by ecosocialists from 13 countries. Its main goals are to improve communication and coordination among ecosocialists worldwide, and to organize a major ecosocialist conference in Brazil in January 2009, in conjunction with the World Social Forum.

The EIN is a very loose and open organization. Its only organizational structure is a steering committee to plan the Brazil conference. Anyone who supports the broad goals of the ecosocialism is welcome to participate — more information is available on our website.

How do you respond to socialists who argue that there is no need for specifically “ecosocialist” ideas or activity?

ANGUS: In a certain sense they are correct. Marxism embodies a wealth of profound ecological thought, far more than many green activists realize.

But while concern for ecology was a fundamental part of Marx’s thought, and the Bolsheviks were certainly aware of the issue, the sad fact is that the Marxist left ignored this issue for many decades. It’s important to correct that — and to do so publicly and explicitly.

Using the word “ecosocialism” is a way of signalling loud and clear that we consider climate change not just as another stick to bash capitalism with, but as a critically important issue, one of the principal problems facing humanity in this century.

But there is more involved. Marxism is not a fixed set of eternal truths — it is a living body of thought, a method of understanding society and a tool for social change. Socialists whose views don’t evolve to incorporate new social and scientific insights become irrelevant sectarians — we’ve seen that happen to many individuals and groups over the years.

Just as Marx and Engels studied and adopted ideas from the scientists of their day — Liebig on soil fertility, Morgan on early societies, Darwin on evolution, and many others — so Marxists today must learn from today’s scientists, especially about the biggest issues of the day. Ecosocialism aims to do just that.

Can capitalism solve global warming?

ANGUS: The depends on what you mean by “solve.”

Dealing with global warming includes two components — mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation means reducing greenhouse gas emissions so that global warming slows down and eventually reverses. Adaptation means making changes that will enable people to survive in a world where some climate change is inevitable, and where climate chaos is increasingly likely.

In my opinion, capitalism’s insatiable need for growth, combined with its massive dependence on fossil fuels as the dominant energy source, mean that it is very unlikely that we will see an effective mitigation program from any major capitalist country.

Scientists say that if the average temperature rises more than 2 degrees, dangerous climate change becomes very probable. There is no sign that any of the industrialized countries will implement measures sufficient to stop such a temperature increase — anything they do will be too little, too late.

But if we do not succeed in bringing this system to an end, capitalism will undoubtedly adapt to the new climate. It will do what capitalism always does — it will impose the greatest burdens on the most vulnerable, on poor people and poor nations. Climate refugees will multiply and millions will die. The imperialist powers will fight against the global south, and amongst themselves, to control the world’s resources, including not just fuel but also food. The most barbaric forms of capitalism will intensify and spread.

In short — yes, capitalism can “solve” global warming, but the capitalist solution will be catastrophic for the great majority of the world’s people.