The whole text is definitely worth a read, so be sure to read it. Here are some key quotes:

“The 99 per cent pay for wealth disparity with lost jobs, foreclosed homes, weakening pensions and slashed services, but Nature pays, too. In the world the one-percenters have created, the needs of whole ecosystems are as easy to disregard as, say, the need the young have for debt-free educations and meaningful jobs.

[…] Extreme disparity and deep inequality generate a double standard with profound consequences. If you are a CEO who skims millions of dollars off other people’s labour, it’s called a “bonus”. If you are a flood victim who breaks into a sporting goods store to grab a lifejacket, it’s called looting. If you lose your job and fall behind on your mortgage, you get evicted. If you are a banker-broker who designed flawed mortgages that caused a million people to lose their homes, you get a second-home vacation-mansion near a golf course.

If you drag heavy fishnets across the ocean floor and pulverise an entire ecosystem, ending thousands of years of dynamic evolution and depriving future generations of a healthy ocean, it’s called free enterprise. But if, like Tim DeChristopher, you disrupt an auction of public land to oil and gas companies, it’s called a crime and you get two years in jail.

[…] The same bottom-line quarterly-report fixation on profitability that accepts oil spills as inevitable also accepts unemployment as inevitable. Tearing apart wildlife habitat to make a profit and doing the same at a workplace are just considered the price of doing business. Clearcutting a forest and clearcutting a labor force are two sides of the same coin.

[…] The fundamental contradiction of our time is this: We have built an all-encompassing economic engine that requires unending growth. A contraction of even a per cent or two is a crisis, and yet we are embedded in ecosystems that are reaching or have reached their limits.

[…] Like so much else these days, the crash, as it happens, will not be suffered in equal measure by all of us. The one percenters will be atop the hill, while the 99 per cent will be in the flood lands below swimming for their lives, clinging to debris or drowning. The Great Recession has previewed just how that will work.
An unsustainable economy is inherently unfair and worse is to come. After all, the car is heading for the cliff’s edge, the grandkids are in the backseat, and all we’re arguing about is who can best put the pedal to the metal.

Another good read on the Occupy movement and the ecological crisis is this piece by Ian Angus and Simon Butler on Grist. They have a little different angle where they focus on our capitalistic system and overpopulation. “The capitalist system and the power of the 1%, not population size, are the root causes of today’s ecological crisis,” they write.

Ever had a digital camera suddenly stop working after several thousand shots for no obvious reason? Again planned obsolescence.

Why is it that every version of Windows seems to take up more disk space than the last version and require a higher spec PC? – possibly because MS have a cosy little deal going with the PC makers to up the spec for windows so that they can sell new PC’s….least you wonder why so many leading PC makers are so resistant to the use of Linux and other open-source software (which comes in a range of different flavours for machines of different operating requirements, one of my decade old laptops at home runs on X-ubuntu quite happily).

Had a DVD or CD in your collection recently fail to play…ever heard of disk rot?

This whole concept dates back to the days of the Phoebus light bulb cartel ( the aforementioned light bulb conspiracy of the title) which conspired to not only fix the price of light bulbs but make them with deliberately shorter working life’s so that the companies involved could sell more of them. This of course explains how a pre-cartel light bulb in Livermore Firehouse, California, is still working after a good century of near continuous use.

Should anyone think I’m some deranged conspiracy theorist (and that next I’m going to start going on about Roswell, the Grassy knoll or Black helicopters), no I’m not – but yes everything they said in this film is more or less true. I once worked in the electronics industry, for indeed a leading manufacturer of printers and I know that they are designed with a limited service life in mind. I would point out thought, that this is in part motivated by H&S and quality control reasons. So not so much a dark machiavellian conspiracy, more “that which we do not speak of”.

When you start considering issues such as fatigue, and age related deterioration (and creep) in plastics you need to come up with a round number of the final end life of your product so that you can be sure that all the critical parts will work safely within said lifetime “envelope”. This inevitably means picking a number; say 30,000 pages of printing and/or 5 years of service, and designing the printer to do just that. Also beyond a certain point there is the risk of the printer failing catastrophically, leaking ink all over your table and carpet (good luck trying to wash that out!), or even catching fire (a rare but potential risk in the event of a serious paper jam and an overheated defective printer head). While such failures are unlikely for an individual printer, when you’re making them by the tens of millions and shipping them worldwide, you have consider such issues. So obviously to get the legal department off our backs the printer is designed to bring itself to an end long before there is any danger of failure.

But equally yes, part of the motivation behind planned obsolescence is to get the public to buy more printers…and inkjet cartridges (most printers are sold at a loss these days, the real money is made selling the cartridges).

In another job, I worked for a leading European steel maker. At one point the Suits upstairs got spooked by all this talk of aluminium cars, particularly in high end vehicles (i.e. luxury car models). At the time car makers were our biggest customers, so any switch by them to aluminium would have been catastrophic. So an extensive R&D program began to redesign our stainless steel products to be better at resisting corrosion, which would give a longer service life (we were prepared to offer a money back guarantee on no significant rust for twenty-five years!). Ways of making cars out of thinner sections of material were also investigated, as this would reduce the vehicle’s weight, producing better power to weight ratio’s, less fuel consumption and of course lower material costs for the manufacturer.

While some of these ideas were indeed taken on board by the car industry, by and large much of it was ignored, especially by the high end car makers. It took awhile but the penny soon dropped, the car companies didn’t want cars that lasted longer, and they certainly didn’t want car bodies that lasted 25 years without a speck of rust! If we built cars to last like that then the public would buy less cars! We also soon learnt (from marketing) that the diversion into aluminium bodied cars for certain high end vehicles were more driven by the “gimmick” factor than any technical reasons. The “…overpaid more-money-than-sense…” types who bought such vehicles (read here about SUV drivers) just liked to be able to brag about how they’re car was made out of aluminium….even though most would probably struggle to tell the difference between the two types of metal even if you wacked them over the head with a aluminium pole!

At around the same time I had a colleague who was working on a academic design project that was looked at using new materials, in particular titanium alloys and ceramics to produce an ultra-durable next generation IC car engines (the petrol heads were apparently getting worried about fuel cells putting them in the poor house in future). Aided by a computerised engine management system (years before the Prius came along, this would come with automatic engine idling reduction as standard), such an engine would have an endurance of the order of several hundred thousand miles (without any serious failures), lower maintenance costs, and best of all much lower fuel consumption. I’ve not heard anything about this project since. I’m assuming it came to an abrupt end after they went and give their presentation to a major car maker and were promptly burnt as witches by the head of marketing and sales.

Now you might say, well so what, this policy is bringing in lots of jobs, and it means people get to upgrade and change their stuff regularly. But you have to consider the environmental costs of such policies. We are seeing literally mountains of E-waste building up in many poorer parts of the world, leaving an awful toxic legacy behind. You also have to consider the embodied energy contained within products, which can often represent half (or more) of the overall lifetime carbon footprint of any product (such as a car). So improving the service life of products would do alot in terms of reducing carbon emissions, as well as reducing the need for new raw material (thus less mining, etc. read about coltan mining here) and less stuff going into landfills. It would also free up factory capacity worldwide to make other stuff, like solar ovens, wind turbines, energy storage systems, etc.

So yes I’m saying it’s possible for us to build cars or electronic goods that last 2 to 4 times longer than the currently do. Thought I would note that such products would also cost more to produce. Certainly not twice as much or four times more, probably more like 30% more or 50% more.  But the cost of such products would inevitably rise and I’m talking here in terms of materials and embodied energy, not just money.

However, this presents a problem, most of us as consumers go for the cheapest product available, and we rarely factor in service life as a deciding issue when buying stuff. Indeed this is the usual excuse you’ll hear from manufacturers when you enquire why they don’t make products with a longer service life. Too many of us buy cheap “crap” like pans and pots or battery’s from cheap discount stores that inevitably break within a few weeks (or hours). So we can hardly blame the corporations for giving us what we want.

For example, you would think the rechargeable battery would be a no-brainer. You buy a pack of them plus a charger for say £15 and it lasts as long as 100 sets of non-rechargeable ones. But unfortunately, the majority of people still plump for the Alkalines – or go and buy the cheapest TV with the widest screen – or the cheap fridge regardless of its energy rating (forgetting how they’ll be paying several times over for one with poorer efficiency once you realise how much electricity a fridge uses over its lifetime). The consumer is often as much at fault here as the manufacturer’s.

One solution to this problem would be legislation. We could mandate a fixed life-time guarantee on all products sold, with this life time limit set by governments, not manufacturers. Or we could fiddle with the VAT rate. Products with a long life time warranty would pay less VAT than items that came with a shorter one (or none!). We could also extend this to include the energy efficiency rating of products, with VAT charged at a rate based on a products energy efficiency rating also.

Of course let’s not kid ourselves, getting such legislation passed would be difficult, especially in our globalised economy. Needless to say, the manufacturing industry would be highly resistant to such polices. They will no doubt argue that less products coming out of factories means less people working in manufacturing, and thus massive layoffs. Those on lower incomes won’t be able to afford such goods anymore. Obviously this would not be to the liking of manufacturing nations such as China or India, who would kick up a right old stink at the WTO if any government tried to implement such a policy. And there’s also the general public. Many of us, like i said earlier, want products which are cheap and have short operating lives. The current resistance to the phase out of incandescent bulbs should show you what you’re up against (see here and here)….although I would note that some of this might be motivated by the fact that some people (see Bachmann here) will oppose anything “environmental” regardless of whether such opposition makes any logically sense or not. The Yes men (see here) once succeeded in getting a load of republicans to sign a petition calling on George Bush to bring about more global warming and more pollution….scary!

I would correct the point made about job losses thought. Obviously products with a longer service life need to be more carefully designed, this means more engineering applied upstream and thus more engineering jobs. Also, the days when thousands of people toiled in the factory and made things with their bare hands are thankfully rare, at least for the sorts of high end products we’re talking about such electronics, electrical goods or cars (its still an issue for products like clothes thought). Even in China, most of these products would be made by robots, not people, so we’re mostly talking about robots being made redundant not people (poor R2-D2). Yes, there would be some layoffs, but it certainly won’t be a case of half the global work force going or anything like that.

And on that point, I would also note a slightly “anti-capitalist” streak you often see in captains of industry when ideas like this come up, or for example suggesting increasing environmental standards or increased regulations on the financial services industry. The “capitalists” will always trot out the argument that business leaders, rather than try and adapt to these changes will be so incensed by such a move that they’ll fire half the work force and then go off in a huff and have a good sulk. That doesn’t sound very “capitalistic” type of behaviour to me. If I were head of, say a TV manufacturer, and I heard that new government reg’s were going to effectively halve TV sales in future, I’d either A) make sure it was my rivals who bore the brunt of such sale reductions (by making sure my product stayed ahead of the curve and outsold everyone else) or  B) I’d decide that if half my factory wasn’t going to be making TV’s any more it might be time to re-tool and commence production of a new product that there was higher demand for, such as solar panels for example.

Another interesting film on a similar theme to the above is the man in the white suit, and 1950’s classic, staring Alex Guinness, it seems to be available on-line here. Worth a watch! The synopsis is that a stereotypical “mad” scientist (Guinness) invents a new type of fiber that never wears out and even repels dirt. Great news….until the textile industry bosses and worker’s Unions both realise the implications of this discovery! An interesting parable that shows the conflict that often occurs when well meaning scientists come up against the realities of politics, economics and vested interests.

This whole issue should also show you how advocating policies such as renewable over fossil fuels (or nuclear) means you coming up against a mass of opposition from vested interest with everything (as they see it) to lose.  This “lightbulb conspiracy” also demonstrates just how wasteful a society we are and how much room for improvement there is.

But I’ll have to leave you now…..I think I hear black helicopters approaching!

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.

The U.N. chief warned that humanity is “running out of time.”

He told the gathering of heads of State, international economists, business leaders and representatives of civil society that to avoid national and global “disaster” will require balanced development that will lift millions out of poverty and, at the same time, protect the planet and ecosystems that support economic growth. He said, “It is good business – good politics – and good for society.”

“China is going to leave all of us in the dust,” Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change declared the previous day, the Associated Press reported.

The diplomat leading the U.N. Climate talks said that China is surpassing the U.S. and Europe in developing clean and low-carbon energy as a way to spur its economy.

“China is committed to winning the green economy race,” she said. “And honestly they are not doing it just because they want to save the planet. They are doing it because it’s good for the economy.”

Last year China increased spending on low-carbon energy by 30 percent to $51.1 billion, “by far the largest figure for any country,” according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The accounting firm Ernst & Young reported in September that China for the first time surpassed the U.S. in its quarterly index of the most appealing countries for renewable energy projects.

“You can leapfrog – you don’t have to follow the model of the north,” Figueres declared. “China is showing this.” China’s chief climate negotiator Su Wei has said his country will boost energy efficiency in its next five-year plan being worked out this year.

European Union Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard called on U.S. business to take greater initiative in embracing a more energy-efficient economic model.

Governments can provide the conditions for green growth by setting “a price on carbon,” Hedegaard said. “If it costs a lot to pollute a lot, then business has an incentive to pollute less.”

This article was first published in People’s World on February 4th, 2011.
Author: Juan Lopez.

“The Baltic nation of Latvia is blessed with some of the most beautiful forests in the world, millions of square kilometres of pristine woodland that support a complex biodiversity of rare species of animals and plants. [...] As the UK aims to become one of the greenest countries in Europe, we expose its role in the deforestation of Latvia.”

The clear cutting, which is a total loss not only for biological diversity but also for social and economic reasons, is the result of the current economic crisis in Latvia. It is being fueled by the demand from overseas markets, particularly the UK which has been Latvia’s main export market for over 300 years. Al Jazeera shows how corporations and the Latvian government ignores EU habitat directives, laws and nature reserves to be able to satisfy the market demand for timber. They also question the validation of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certificate which is said to only label timber that is sustainable produced.

“Many of the products of the trade from furniture to wood pulp and paper are sold in the UK under a labelling scheme run by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international NGO that certifies timber is being sustainably produced. Is that really true?”

This episode shows not just the world’s ecological unequal exchange but also how unattainable sustainability is in today’s capitalistic system which is based on a never-ending growth rate.

“Man lives from nature, i.e., nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die. To say that man’s physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.”

The general idea is that disruptions, or interruptions, in natural cycles and processes creates an metabolic rift between nature and social systems which leads to a buildup of waste and in the end to the degradation of our environment.

As people moved into cities they lost the contact with nature, and as a result they became less likely to consider how their actions and decisions affected the environment. Marx also noted that as the income for the workers in the cities increased, capitalists searched for a cheaper workforce outside of the city. Today when half of the world’s population lives in cities this is happening on a larger and more global scale. More people than ever have lost the direct contact with nature. And instead of companies and corporations looking for cheaper workers from the countryside they now look outside the nation’s borders, mainly in developing nations. The developed world is performing a “brain drain” where they are literally stealing the higher educated students and people from poorer and undeveloped nations. This is turn is fueling “a vicious downward cycle of underdevelopment” in the countries affected.

An example of a global metabolic rift and its consequences can be seen in the 19th century trade in guano (bird droppings) and nitrates from Peru and Chile to Europe. In the late 1800s several agronomists and agriculture chemists, such as Justus von Liebig, warned that the transfer of food from the early industrialized agriculture farms on the countryside to the cities had resulted in a severe loss of soil nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. This threat to the food production was the result of the division between town and country. The food was now being transported to cities far away from its source. And its waste products, which before used to help replenish the soil, now ended up polluting the cities instead. So this metabolic rift between town and country resulted in the loss of soil fertility in Great Britain and other nations which in turn led to the global trade of guano and nitrates from Peru and Chile. This trade also involved transfer of labor from China to work on the guano islands in Peru under slave-like or even worse conditions. It resulted in national economies strained by a huge burden of debt, the degradation of the Chilean and Peruvian environment and even led to a war between Chile and Peru over the guano resources. Liebig has said that this hunt for guano and nitrates “deprives all countries of the conditions of their fertility” and even likened Great Britain to a vampire which is “sucking its lifeblood without any real necessity or permanent gain for itself”.

Today guano is still widely sold around the world especially to countries such as France, Israel and the United States. Lately guano has also gained the status as an organic fertilizer which has helped increase the demands for it. But due to commercial overfishing as well as habitat loss and degradation the Guanay Cormorant bird has declined from its former population peak at around 60 million individuals to a slowly increasing population level at around 4 million birds today.

When it comes to anthropogenic global climate change Marx metabolic rift theory can help us to better understand and solve the biggest environmental crisis ever.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that the observed 0.6 °C temperature increases in global temperatures since the middle of the 20th century is a result of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities such as fossil fuels. So we humans have with our overdependence on fossil fuels disrupted the natural carbon cycle and earth’s climate system. We are now accumulating more and more waste emissions into our atmosphere, 23 billion metric tons of CO2 every year, with no end in sight. With devastating effects this accelerating buildup of greenhouse gas waste emissions is warming up our planet and changing our climate.

Because capitalism promotes the accumulation of capital on a never-ending and always expanding scale it cannot be sustainable. So the manmade climate change we are seeing now is, according to Brett Clark and Richard York, a result of a metabolic rift created by the capitalistic world system. To be able to address and solve this carbon rift and stop the worst effects of climate change Marx metabolic rift theory shows us that a complete transformation, or revolution, of our society is needed. If we don’t the carbon rift will continue to expand and we will race faster and faster towards the burning cliff.

References:

• Hornborg, A., J.R. McNeill & J. Martinez-Alier, red. (2007).”Rethinking Environmental History: World-System History and Global Environmental Change”
• Clark, Brett & York, Richard (2005). “Carbon metabolism: Global capitalism, climate change, and the biospheric rift”
• Moore, Jason (2000). “Marx and the Historical Ecology of Capital Accumulation on a World Scale: A Comment on Alf Hornborg’s “Ecosystems and World Systems: Accumulation as an Ecological Process.””
• Foster, Bellamy, John (1999). “The Vulnerable Planet”
• McMichael, Philip (2008). “Contemporary Contradictions of the Global Development Project: Geopolitics, Global Ecology and the ‘Development Climate,” Third World Quarterly.

“AMY GOODMAN: What level of emissions are you willing to support reductions of emissions?

PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ: [translated] One hundred percent. One hundred percent. We must reduce the emissions 100 percent. In Venezuela, the emissions are currently insignificant compared to the emissions of the developed countries. We are in agreement. We must reduce all the emissions that are destroying the planet. However, that requires a change in lifestyle, a change in the economic model: we must go from capitalism to socialism. That’s the real solution.”

You can read a rush transcript of the interview here. Amy Goodman and Democracy Now had a great coverage of the Copenhagen climate conference which is worth a look if you missed it.

Photo credit: Deivis

During a recent visit to Cuba, we stopped by an agricultural cooperative on the outskirts of Havana. Its farmers and cooperatives across the country are part of what’s widely acknowledged as the world’s largest organic farming experiment. Hundreds of thousands of farmers at the grassroots proudly proclaim themselves part of Cuba’s “environmental movement.”

In 2008 Cuba was devastated by three full force hurricanes that caused some $10 billion in damage, including 400,000 homes destroyed and widespread crop damage. Cubans link the growing destructive power and frequency of the hurricanes with global climate change. Understandably, environmental awareness and the need for radical measures to curb global warming run high.

Remarkably, in 2006 the World Wildlife Federation rated Cuba as the only country that combined high human development standards as defined by high literacy and health indexes with a low ecological footprint including electricity consumed and carbon dioxide emitted per capita.

This got me interested in the path of sustainable socialist development Cuba has chosen and how environmental consciousness developed. How could an underdeveloped country with limited economic resources have an environmental record better than its wealthy neighbor to the north? The story gives one great hope that planet Earth can be saved.

The effort to reverse environmental destruction and follow a path of sustainable development is all the more remarkable considering Cuba’s history, the US blockade and continuous efforts to overthrow its government.

The Revolution charts a new course

When Christopher Columbus first landed on Cuban shores in 1492 he was taken by the beauty of the island, then covered 95% by forests. Soon Spanish and later US colonialists began a slash and burn destruction that transformed Cuba into a sugar colony and wiped out the indigenous population. By the late 1800s the land had been largely stripped of the trees and one-fourth of the world’s sugar was produced there. By the 1950s only 14% of the forests remained.

In Dialectics of Nature, Frederick Engels illustrated how the capitalist drive for profit in Cuba was destroying the island’s ecology. Spanish planters “burned down forests on the slopes of the mountains and obtained from the ashes sufficient fertilizer for one generation of highly profitable coffee trees … what cared they that the heavy tropical rainfall afterwards washed away the unprotected upper stratum of soil, leaving behind only bare rock!”

But there was also a parallel history – those patriots who treasured the land and its beauty, those who formed the growing independence movement. The acknowledged father of the country Jose Marti wrote in the 19th century, “To live on earth is more than duty to make it well.”

When the Cuban Revolution took place in 1959, environmental protection became a priority because leading revolutionaries were already ecologically committed. The first Agrarian Reform in 1959 nationalized the large landed estates and contained a clause on “The Conservation of Forests and Soils,” setting aside large preserves of some of Cuba’s greatest natural treasures including the famed Zapata Swamp and wetlands with the endangered Cuban crocodile.

In subsequent years advanced environmental legislation was adopted and codified in the Constitution, although laws were not always enforced. Scientists and educators were among those leading the environmental movement and headed up the agencies responsible for implementing a new policy.

Many organizations were founded that comprised a grassroots environmental movement including the National Zoological Society, Pro Naturaleza, the Foundation for Man and Nature, the National Association of Small Farmers, the Confederation of Trade Unions and Federation of Women. The Communist Party of Cuba and former president Fidel Castro are leading environmental advocates.

The Cubans have made serious mistakes over the years under the immense pressure of economic development and scarcity. But they have also learned from their mistakes and adjusted policies. Not surprisingly they began constructing socialism by largely copying the Soviet model that stressed industrialization without full regard to environmental impact. They soon realized the resulting damage and also that a model fitting their particular circumstances was needed.

For example, by the 1980s industrial pollution had grown, algae blooms appeared, hotel construction in Varadero had caused beach erosion and large scale industrialized farming using irrigation had caused widespread salinization and degraded the soil. This sparked a debate over the course of agricultural development and Cuban government officials began to consider a new direction.

In 1992 under the impact of the growing global environmental movement, the World Summit at Rio de Janeiro was held. Castro attended and delivered a ringing call to address economic and social underdevelopment and poverty with sustainability. He remarked,

“If we want to save humanity from destroying itself, we have to distribute more equitably the riches and available technologies on this planet. Less luxury and pilfering from a few countries for less poverty and hunger for the rest of the Earth. No more transfer to the Third World of lifestyles and habits of consumerism that ruin the environment.”

While the Cubans had already begun to implement some sustainable practices it was the crisis of world socialism and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that radically accelerated the process. Eighty-five percent of Cuban imports including oil, farm implements, chemical fertilizers and foods stuffs came from the socialist community. When socialism collapsed Cuba was forced to change overnight.

Change was most dramatic in the agricultural sphere. The Cubans turned to organic farming using oxen, natural means of pest control and by spreading the manure of draft animals on the fields. Farmers emphatically told us when the blockade ends they will continue organic farming because it is better for the environment, the working conditions of the farmers and produces healthier food for the people.

In addition, the Cubans found the highly centralized model of agricultural production inefficient, so they broke up the large state enterprises into smaller cooperatives. This allowed decentralized operation and created the basis for grassroots democratic management and local responsibility.

Over one million bicycles were imported from China and five new bicycle production plants were built. Over 500,000 bikes were put in operation in Havana.

The Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment (like our EPA) was created to oversee environmental policy and its enforcement.

In 1993 the National Energy Sources Development Program was adopted whose first aim was conservation and energy efficiency and to begin to use more renewable energy sources.

As Renewable Energy World Magazine noted,

“All rural schools, health clinics, and social centers in the country, not previously connected to the (electric) grid, were electrified with solar energy, and today 2,364 of the solar electric systems on the island are on rural schools. Making lights, computers, and educational television programs accessible to every school child in the country; this program won Cuba the Global 500 award from the United Nations in 2001.”

The Energy Revolution

However these measures proved inadequate. So in 2006 Cuba adopted what was called the Energy Revolution consisting of five aspects: conservation, upgrading the electric grid, greater use of renewable resources, greater exploration of local gas and oil and greater international cooperation.

Conservation was deemed the key element. Castro remarked,

“We are not waiting for fuel to fall from the sky, because we have discovered, fortunately, something much more important – energy conservation, which is like finding a great oil deposit.”

The program has proved a great success in part because the whole country has been mobilized to participate through a mass education campaign. An army of young social workers is responsible for going door to door to convey the latest environmental practices.

Cuba became the first country to totally replace incandescent bulbs with energy saving compact florescent bulbs. Inefficient and highly polluting kerosene stoves were replaced by electrified rice cooking pots bought from China.

The national power grid has been modernized and decentralized. Hundreds of micro hydroelectric systems were built; urban farming and the use of hydroponics have been expanded.

Two large wind farms have been constructed on the coast; a 100-kilowatt solar electric power plant and thousands of independent solar powered systems have been built in rural areas. Recycling sugar waste products is producing bio-fuels.

Another important result of the Rio Summit was a call to preserve the world’s biodiversity. Cuba was among the first countries to embrace this challenge. Biodiversity was seen as an integral part of sustainable development and led to environmental protection by law. After a countrywide discussion, it adopted the National Strategy and Plan of Action for Biodiversity in 2000 and identified 42 different ecosystems including 17 that were described as ecologically sensitive.

Reforestation has increased to 21% and is growing. Forests and trees are under strict protection.

Because of the global economic crisis, Cuba is paying more on the world market for food imports. During the recent July 26th celebrations President Raul Castro called for food sovereignty to reduce costs. But this will also lower Cuba’s carbon footprint further by reducing the use of global transport. Local transport is being reduced by the expansion of urban farming.

Because Cuba’s beautiful coastal areas haven’t been stolen by the rich, carved up and sold off for summer homes or profit, but instead remain under public ownership, it’s possible to offer protection of coastal wetlands, mangrove swamps, beaches and the coral reefs which are said to be among the best preserved in the world.

Cuba has established coastal zones out to sea where construction is banned and protection zones of highly limited development inland 60-80 meters beyond the vegetation line. The true test will come when new facilities are constructed to accommodate the influx of US tourists anticipated when the blockade falls. Can development and environmental protection be meshed with the many joint construction projects?

Cuba’s example shows that a society geared toward socialist development, where working people hold economic and political power, is far superior to capitalism when it comes to dealing with the environmental crisis and actually reversing environmental destruction.

Monopoly corporations who constantly obstruct passage of environmental laws or thumb their nose at enforcement because it conflicts with their drive for maximum profits do not dominate Cuba. There is no bribing legislators and spreading of phony science.

Cuba’s example illustrates how socialism puts people first, how economic development and sustainability can be synonymous, how a country can learn from its mistakes and have the flexibility to deal with problems and crises as they arise. At a moment when the global economic crisis, vast inequality and poverty are inextricably linked to the global environmental crisis – socialism offers the only viable path to ensure humanity’s future.

Author: John Bachtell
People’s Weekly World Newspaper, 09/03/09

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.