Hal Draper put it perfectly, “the operative contradiction is between the rights of private property...and the organized proletariat’s inevitable insistence on social responsibility for all vital aspects of life, including economic.”
Our efforts should center on resolving an operative contradiction that requires thinking about degrowth and post-strategies, all of which are anticapitalist in strategy but socialist in regenerative tactics. Land, labor, and capital (LLC) must be framed as regenerative in ways that ensure a just economy in regional, decentralized contexts. This will require rethinking the relationship of LLC
Degrowth, Post-Growth, (full) employment, the Green New Deal, sustainability, a Jobs Guarantee- there are so many critical concepts that intersect when it comes to creating a just economy.
Can humanity achieve an optimal degree of sustainability and build a regenerative economy perhaps in spite of neoliberal entrepreneurialism, technology, and innovative policy. A circular and or steady-state economy can achieve such policy goals but it will require restructuring many productive relations.
Matthew Huber has a new book, Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet Verso 2022. that builds on a 2018 article outlining five principles toward socialist climate policies.
Matthew Huber writes on five basic principles of a socialist climate politics. “A core theme across all five is that a socialist climate politics is dramatically different than the ‘third way’ technocratic policy approaches that have dominated climate politics over the last three decades.”
This movement must put both democracy and ecology at the center of a 21st Century democratic ecosocialism.
#1 - Climate change is a class problem. … Marx and Engels are quite clear on how systems change: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Too often the notion of “system change” doesn’t emphasize that we are fighting a class of people rather than a vague, impersonal “system.” Class struggle entails a politics that directly confronts the interests of the class in power - whether it be strikes, regulatory policies, or movements to expropriate property (just recently the idea of nationalizing the fossil fuel industry has finally circulated into climate policy discussions).
Yet there are some who envision a politics of system change that has nothing to do with class. Take this statement from Benjamin Fong’s otherwise excellent and surprising Op-Ed in the New York Times, “The Climate Crisis? It’s Capitalism, stupid”:
As an increasing number of environmental groups are emphasizing, it’s systemic change or bust. From a political standpoint, something interesting has occurred here: Climate change has made anticapitalist struggle, for the first time in history, a non-class-based issue.
Now, how in the world is anti-capitalism (let alone climate) a “non-class based issue”? We need to go beyond vague notions of class as what Erik Olin Wright calls “gradational” upper/middle/lower) based on income (rich vs. poor). A socialist climate politics should revive a Marxian definition of class as those who own and control the “means of production.”...
A class approach simplifies climate politics in way that makes our political tasks clearer. It is not “all of us” who are to blame (or, as the recent New York Times megastory, “Losing Earth” put it, “ourselves” or “human nature”), but rather the small minority of capitalists who control and profit from the production. If socialism could be summed up in one slogan it might be this: democratize production. Production could be geared not toward profit, but the social needs of human life - and a recognition of the ecological systems that make all human and nonhuman life possible in the first place. Yet, getting there will require a monumental struggle against those who currently control production for profit. How can we win this struggle?
#2 – Climate solutions need to appeal to the material interests of the working class. … At the broadest level, we could define the working class as those who must work to survive. As Sarah Jaffe and others have pointed out, the American working class of today is to a large extent female and disproportionately people of color. It includes not only industrial workers but nurses, teachers, warehouse workers, and retail workers. In the United States, there are more people that work at Arby’s than in coal mines. Kim Moody roughly estimates that after subtracting the 1% of capitalists who actually direct and control major corporations and various professional, managerial, and small business occupations, the working class constitutes 63% of the employed population. If you add all the millions who are currently “out” of the workforce due to disability, unemployment, and care responsibilities, it is closer to 75%. Moody’s first number overlaps with another jarring statistic: 63% of households could not afford a simple $500 emergency payment for something like a ER visit or car breaking down. If climate politics wants to win, it must learn how to better speak to the interests of this 63%. In fact, it is impossible to imagine we are building a democratic movement without doing so.
... But, socialists see a deeper source of power in the working class. It’s not merely a simple numbers game (the “massed majority”), but also the crucial dependence of capitalists on workers to produce goods and services, transport commodities, and maintain critical infrastructure. … We need to start thinking how working class power – including the strike – could be deployed in climate struggles. The climate movement already uses the power of disruptive action to block the expansion of fossil fuel industries, but has rarely harnessed the power of the workers inside those industries themselves (although see Paul Hampton’s book for examples of trade union climate struggles).
Why does this matter for climate politics? Because, for the most part, our entire political strategy on climate change as it exists now does not appeal to working class concerns.
... A reason for this is that many of the advocates of carbon taxes and fees are themselves middle to upper class professionals. ... We will not win on a program of less, limits, and reductions.
Climate activists are waking up to this and attempting to frame policies that speak to issues of economic justice and inequality…
The climate movement as currently constituted has done some incredible organizing and grassroots mobilization. Yet, one could argue that in class terms the movement is quite narrow – a mixture of highly educated professionals (scientists, academics, journalists, government workers, etc.) and those most impacted on the “frontlines” of climate disaster (indigenous, peasant, and other marginalized populations whose livelihoods are directly imperiled). This coalition will be the core of any effective climate movement – and racial and environmental justice must be front and center – but professionals and the marginalized on their own are not enough. A mass movement will need to speak to working class interests in ways that cut across the many geographical, racial, and other divisions that often hinder mass politics. For example, a national green jobs infrastructure program could combat poverty in inner city San Francisco and rural Appalachia.
#3 - Climate politics cannot only be about “knowledge” – and the belief or denial of “the science” – and must be about material control and power
To deny the science of climate change in 2018 is preposterous. But, too often, our politics makes the struggle about knowledge of the science itself. Those who oppose climate action are “denialists.” A naïve version of this story says that we need to simply better “communicate” the science to the masses, and this will automatically lead to political action on climate change; as if the lack of climate action is due to the lack of knowledge of the masses. Yet, as Jonathan Smucker argues, “right does not equal might.” It is not at all clear that if we convinced the 47% of the country that questions the truth of climate change we will also overcome the entrenched power of the fossil fuel industry.
... The climate struggle is less about knowledge and more about a material struggle for power.
#4 - Don’t Tax Molecules, Tax the Rich…A lot!
The local International Socialist Organization branch in my home city, Syracuse, recently made posters with this slogan: “Tax the Rich a Lot.” This sums up the socialist approach to fiscal policy quite nicely. While many climate policy wonks think we need to use the tax system to correct a “market failure” and internalize the costs of “externalities,” socialists believe we need to tax the rich to fund vital public services for the masses of people. A carbon tax is often framed as a measure applied on an entire economy – a working class commuter needs to ‘internalize’ the costs of emissions as much as a steel plant. It is a tax on a molecule (CO2), not specific people. A socialist approach needs to intensify the antagonisms – we need to tax them (the real polluters) to fund us (the working class). ...
#5 - Climate Change Requires Planetary Solidarity
Socialism is internationalist. Two slogans are at the core of socialist politics: “Workers of the world, unite!” and, from the socialist anthem The Internationalé: “The international ideal, Unites the human race!” These slogans understood workers had a shared global interest against a global capitalist class, but the idea of uniting the human race resonates differently today as humanity faces the prospect of “hothouse earth.” Although this ideal was distorted by the Stalinist maxim of “socialism in one country,” Marx and the socialist movement always imagined a global “revolution in humankind” (as Hal Draper described it). Similarly, we cannot solve climate change working remotely in our individual countries.
Climate politics will require a kind of planetary solidarity across borders as workers, peasants, and indigenous peoples come together to see their shared interest in maintaining a livable planet. This planetary solidarity must understand global climate change is a criminal atrocity perpetrated by a small minority of capitalists mainly located in the Global North…
The climate justice movement is already an important example of this kind of international solidarity. Climate justice internationalism pushes us to overcome the boundaries that divide us as a species – borders and the arbitrary divisions of racialized categories – but also respecting vastly different cultures and livelihood models on the planet….
The goal is to democratize control over providing for our basic needs. As Shawn Gude recently put it, “democratic socialism, at its core, is about deepening democracy where it exists and introducing democracy where it is absent.” Today much of what we need to survive is produced by firms, “private governments” only seeking profit. But, as explained above, democracy also means appealing to the needs of the vast majority of people who crave a decent, secure and comfortable life. Socialism would gear the entire economy towards “care,” and the needs of the many against the profits of a few. The struggle for decarbonization cannot be cast as purely technical or economistic “energy transition;” it must be about exerting popular control over life itself to veer us away from irreversible disaster.
--Overall it is quite surprising how well the challenge of climate change overlaps with some classical principles of socialism. The heart of the issue is that we can no longer trust private capitalists to solve the problem on their own...
www.the-trouble.com/…
It has been widely noted that degrowth will be politically hard to achieve. But why? Climate change is a huge motivator to pursue a degrowth economy, but we should be pursuing it anyway — it is entirely rational to maximize the wellbeing of people and planet rather than simply focusing on the growth in the value of financial transactions in an economy.
Embracing a degrowth economy will require a huge cultural shift. In fact, we probably need to ‘decolonize’ our minds and start thinking like Indigenous cultures who make decisions with the next seven generations in mind. The Australian government doesn’t make decisions with the next generation in mind, let alone several generations. But don’t be fooled into thinking that this is the human condition, and that we are a greedy, selfish species. It’s simply not true. Neoliberalism — and the artificial scarcity that capitalism thrives upon — does bring out that side. It’s why we have a government in power today that still refuses to sign up to even the least controversial of climate targets of net-zero by 2050. But it is only one side of us, and we also have immense capabilities to cooperate and care for each other. Indeed, contrary to popular belief, ecological economist Tim Jackson argues that it is co-operation, rather than competition, that has enabled us to evolve as a species.
If you think that creating this cultural shift is near impossible, wait until you hear about the technology we are relying on instead. Not a single one of the 222 scenarios in the IPCC Special Report into 1.5 degrees of warming projects a declining GDP trajectory; in fact they all project continued GDP growth. Simultaneously they all rely on controversial amounts of carbon dioxide removal and/or unprecedented technological changes. It seems imprudent, absurd even, to rely upon technology that “faces substantial uncertainty, as well as sustainability and feasibility concerns” — rather than reduce our emissions today. Consider that if the wealthiest 10 percent, who are responsible for half of all global emissions, were to reduce their emissions to that of the average European (hardly subsistence living) we could cut emissions by a third and we could do this relatively quickly.
medium.com/...
Even enthusiasts for carbon offsetting do not claim the system is ideal. Some offsetters draw the line at avoided deforestation: the Gold Standard offsetting programme, for instance, backed by green groups including WWF, does not issue credits for avoided deforestation projects because of the concerns above.
But in the absence of a global system that rewards forested nations for preserving their forests, and monitors their success in doing so, offsetting does provide a source of income and protection to some areas, and at least some form of monitoring and accountability to ensure that companies are sticking to their commitments.
What are the long-term solutions?
Carbon offsets can only ever be a sticking plaster, not a cure. To keep the world’s forests standing, at least $100bn needs to flow to heavily forested developing countries each year.
Global efforts are needed to encourage nations to keep their forests standing, alongside political and public pressure on recalcitrant governments. At the postponed UN climate summit, COP26, to be held this autumn in Glasgow, governments will have to set out national plans for meeting the 2015 Paris agreement. That may be the last chance for a concerted plan to save the world’s remaining tropical forests, and the British hosts will have to prove they are up to that task.
www.theguardian.com/...
In an earlier commentary, we argued that pitting circular economy against degrowth creates a false dichotomy.6 A recent editorial in Nature agrees with our assessment.7 In this article, we discuss how the two perspectives can be brought together, identifying the infimals (subsystems) that contribute to both supremals (the circular economy and degrowth) in the context of strong sustainability.
Specifically, we draw attention to infimals such as dematerialization, de-obsolescence, and product-service systems (PSS). Patterns, structures, and mental models associated with these systems require us to consider their implications on humanity’s well-being and other broad measures of social progress.
www.cutter.com/...
Creating markets for carbon or rather treating carbon offsets as commodities ultimately will fail in terms of assuming that markets provide solutions in a crisis. Ultimately certain class will profits before public benefits are realized since the notion of climate crisis will arrive at a moment where remediation may be impossible. Carbon capture technology has that same developmental problem since profitability precedes effectiveness or even viability in the absence of industrial policies to regulate such markets including those for offset credits.
A cap-and-trade system may present problems for how the neoliberal approach to the environment should rethink the notion of taxes on negative externalities. This is much like much like MMT rethinks the economy and especially the role of the state. While entrepreneurship is usually associated with innovation and improved efficiency, and thus reduced natural resource rents, excessive entrepreneurial activity may increase natural resource rents and harm the environment. A similar argument could be made about land division like redlining or land and commodity speculation in terms of trans-border trade differences.
It is also important for any carbon credit (offset) to prove a concept called additionality. The concept of additionality addresses the question of whether the project would have happened in the absence of an intervention in the form of the price signal of carbon credits. Only projects with emissions below their baseline level, defined as emissions under a scenario without this price signal (holding all other factors constant), represent a net environmental benefit. Carbon projects that yield strong financial returns even in the absence of revenue from carbon credits; or that are compelled by regulations; or that represent common practice in an industry; are usually not considered additional. A full determination of additionality requires a careful investigation of proposed carbon offset projects.[33]
It is generally agreed that voluntary carbon offset projects must demonstrate additionality to ensure the legitimacy of the environmental stewardship claims resulting from the retirement of carbon credits (offsets).
[...]
As several countries responsible for a large proportion of global emissions (notably USA, India, China) have avoided mandatory caps, this also means that businesses in capped countries may perceive themselves to be working at a competitive disadvantage against those in uncapped countries as they are now paying for their carbon costs directly.
[...]
While the carbon credit system can be an effective way to regulate carbon offsets by large institutions in large developed countries, it does not do enough to combat climate change in developing countries. Developing countries would be unlikely to adopt a carbon credit system to curve their emissions. These countries often prioritize economic growth and poverty alleviation over lowering their fossil fuel use and carbon emissions rate.
en.wikipedia.org/…
In economics, economic rent is any payment (in the context of a market transaction) to an owner or factor of production in excess of the costs needed to bring that factor into production. In classical economics, economic rent is any payment made (including imputed value) or benefit received for non-produced inputs such as location (land) and for assets formed by creating official privilege over natural opportunities (e.g., patents).
Rent seeking is an economic concept that occurs when an entity seeks to gain wealth without any reciprocal contribution of productivity. The economic rent of a natural resource equals the value of capital services flows rendered by the natural resources, or their share in the gross operating surplus; its value is given by the value of extraction. Resource rent may be divided between depletion and return to natural capital. stats.oecd.org/...
Natural resources rents are estimated as the difference between the price of a commodity and the average cost of producing it. Total natural resources rents are the sum of oil rents, natural gas rents, coal rents, mineral rents, and forest rents. ourworldindata.org/...
In economics, rent is a surplus value after all costs and normal returns have been accounted for, i.e. the difference between the price at which an output from a resource can be sold and its respective extraction and production costs, including normal return.[1] This concept is usually termed economic rent but when referring to rent in natural resources such as coastal space or minerals, it is commonly called resource rent. It can also be conceptualised as abnormal or supernormal profit.
In practice, identifying and measuring (or collecting) resource rent is not straightforward. At any point in time, rent depends on the availability of information, market conditions, technology and the system of property rights used to govern access to and management of resources.
en.wikipedia.org/...
Total natural resources rents (% of GDP)
Definition: Total natural resources rents are the sum of oil rents, natural gas rents, coal rents (hard and soft), mineral rents, and forest rents.
Description: The map below shows how Total natural resources rents (% of GDP) varies by country. The shade of the country corresponds to the magnitude of the indicator. The darker the shade, the higher the value. The country with the highest value in the world is Congo, with a value of 42.67. The country with the lowest value in the world is Grenada, with a value of 0.00.
Source: Estimates based on sources and methods described in "The Changing Wealth of Nations: Measuring Sustainable Development in the New Millennium" (World Bank, 2011).
Development Relevance: Accounting for the contribution of natural resources to economic output is important in building an analytical framework for sustainable development. In some countries earnings from natural resources, especially from fossil fuels and minerals, account for a sizable share of GDP, and much of these earnings come in the form of economic rents - revenues above the cost of extracting the resources. Natural resources give rise to economic rents because they are not produced. For produced goods and services competitive forces expand supply until economic profits are driven to zero, but natural resources in fixed supply often command returns well in excess of their cost of production. Rents from nonrenewable resources - fossil fuels and minerals - as well as rents from overharvesting of forests indicate the liquidation of a country's capital stock. When countries use such rents to support current consumption rather than to invest in new capital to replace what is being used up, they are, in effect, borrowing against their future.
Limitations and Exceptions: This definition of economic rent differs from that used in the System of National Accounts, where rents are a form of property income, consisting of payments to landowners by a tenant for the use of the land or payments to the owners of subsoil assets by institutional units permitting them to extract subsoil deposits.
Statistical Concept and Methodology: The estimates of natural resources rents are calculated as the difference between the price of a commodity and the average cost of producing it. This is done by estimating the world price of units of specific commodities and subtracting estimates of average unit costs of extraction or harvesting costs (including a normal return on capital). These unit rents are then multiplied by the physical quantities countries extract or harvest to determine the rents for each commodity as a share of gross domestic product (GDP).
Aggregation method: Weighted average
www.indexmundi.com/...
Resource rent represents an interesting problem for identifying the “not straightforward” nature of resources and the relation of resource rents to the problem of land-taxes especially the calculation of single taxes for Georgian-style land taxes. For example, Michael Hudson is a proponent for taxing rent, especially land rent. ".... politically, taxing economic rent has become the bête noire of neoliberal globalism. It is what property owners and rentiers fear most of all, as land, subsoil resources and natural monopolies far exceed industrial capital in magnitude. What appears in the statistics at first glance as 'profit' turns out upon examination to be Ricardian or 'economic' rent." en.wikipedia.org/...
A cap-and-trade system is an approach that relies on market forces to reduce emissions at the lowest cost. But as a market-based mechanism, it has severe limitations. First, it is susceptible to powerful political forces, which is why the oil and gas industry prefers a cap-and-trade system over a well-designed regulation regime on its products. Second, cap-and-trade systems permit carbon offsets, which end up overstating emissions reductions. Simply put, there are too many free allowances and offsets under the cap-and-trade system. Third, as a market-based mechanism, a cap-and trade system favors overwhelmingly big business and works to the disadvantage of frontline communities. This is the primary reason why California’s landmark cap-and-trade program has been under attack by environmental justice activists almost from day one.
In sum, while progress has been made in the state’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, its market-based environmental approach has major shortcomings. California’s much-admired cap-and-trade program, which served as the template for Washington’s Climate Commitment Act, does not constitute a transformative climate change policy by any stretch of the imagination, and an alternative plan to combat global warming is very much needed.
The study already mentioned by PERI researchers, titled “A Program for Economics Recovery and Clean Energy Transition in California,” is a thorough plan for the building of a clean energy infrastructure in California which will secure 100 percent reductions in carbon emissions by 2045, while generating about 1 million net new jobs across the state. It is the sort of bold and aggressive plan that not only California but every state in the US needs in the age of global warming. It is also enforceable because it is more than cost-effective. Also highly encouraging is the fact that more than 20 unions, including fossil fuel unions, have already endorsed the plan for a clean energy transition in California.
redgreenandblue.org/...
Below are more technical items of related interest
Positive rather than negative taxes are necessary and essential as pigovian taxation insists. As correctly pointed out by MMT that since the government print its money, tax no longer is the tool of revenue collection for the government still has to collect taxes because: It is a tool to control demand and hence inflation in the economy It is tool of wealth transfer in the economy.
Are economists are wrong when they advocate carbon taxes/emissions trading as central elements of climate policy? Plenty of dedicated climate activists (some of whom are economists themselves) say "yes."
.@drvolts writes that "climate economics and climate economists have blown it pretty comprehensively." @Noahpinion says that "climate economics has almost completely failed to be useful to the national policy discourse."
volts.wtf/p/a-rant-about…
A rant about economist pundits state that “the neoclassical orthodoxy in economics is fundamentally unequipped to deal with today’s biggest problems.”
.@dolanecon says it's not so straightforward. Apologists AND critics of carbon pricing have gotten things wrong, and he has several suggestions for what economists can do better.
First, economists rely too heavily on the Pigovian model, which stands on a lot of assumptions.
The Pigovian model relies on an idealized neoclassical world in perfect competitive equilibrium except for one distortion: carbon pollution.
Obviously, that's unrealistic.
And that's not the only assumption it makes....
The Pigovian model (and most neoclassical economics) also assumes that people will always act in their perfectly rational self-interest. Really, choices are more likely to conform to bounded rationality.
BUT this is true for regulations/subsidies too...
...choices rooted in bounded rationality slow consumers’ adoption of green technologies such as more efficient lightbulbs and refrigerators.
Price signals combined with regulations might work better than either policy by itself.
The Pigovian model assumes a fixed menu of technologies. All sources of emission are assumed to have full knowledge of these technologies and their costs.
BUT carbon pricing is far from irrelevant to a world of rapidly changing tech.
Under the Pivogian model, we're supposed to know the social cost of carbon. But estimating that is still really, really difficult in the real world.
See this
@BrookingsInst paper by
@rff's Kevin Rennert et. al.
brookings.edu/wp-content/upl…
These are huge limitations, but it doesn't mean that we should abandon carbon pricing. It means that we need a different approach to pricing.
A "target-consistent" approach establishes a clear goal and then works backward to devise cost-effective policies to reach the target.
Carbon pricing is a strong candidate for inclusion in such a set of policies. The target-consistent approach is a natural fit when the chosen policy goal is deep
#decarbonization – achieving net-zero
#emissions by a chosen date.
See
@noahqk et. al.
Finally, we need to address the supposed political toxicity of carbon pricing. Yes, they get a lot of pushback, but so do most effective policies.
(And let's not forget that regs /subsidies are perhaps more vulnerable, see this @jadler1969
paper: niskanencenter.org/legal-and-admi… ).
With that,
@dolanecon lists some ways climate economists can more constructively contribute to the debate ⬇️⬇️⬇️
He concludes: "What economists should not do is withdraw from the debate...When it comes to climate change, we are much more supportive of climate action than the public officials. We ask only to be treated as part of the solution."
Full paper here:
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