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Syndicate
In short, the market can - if pushed and prodded to internalize costs - do a good bit to improve efficiency, but it cannot on its own set sustainable limits to growth and is likely to have a hard time of existing within them. What's also true is that until comparatively recently, socialists hadn't really considered the difficulties of doing that either. Growth was an imperative either to literally provide the goods and eliminate scarcity or to defend against or attempt to achieve dominance over capitalist economies.
Yes, coal-fired electrical power is very cheap compared to other other methods. But most people realize that large scale combustion/burning of coal, gas and oil byproducts isn't feasible for very much longer. Nuclear fission, otoh, is expensive, dirty, dangerous and unreliable now and for the foreseeable future.
Nuclear fusion was promised by 2000 three decades ago. Since then they've achieved controlled fusion reactions. The method is not very efficient for producing power so far. But as Dalton McGuinty would say, they've made some progress since the 1970's. Fusion is future technology projected to be technically feasible by 2040. The next generation really doesn't want to be burning coal and oil byproducts as fuel by that time. And nuclear fission is just too inefficient today and produces too much radioactive waste. The choices may well come to fusion, or a standard of living and societal collapse unparalleled since the dark ages.
ETA: I think that oil and nuclear technology are being monopolized by modern imperialists. A single commodity and understanding of how to break reliance on it are maintaining a wealthy status quo today. These technological imperialists are monopolizing science and technology to maintain deep divisions between rich and poor countries. Technological imperialism must end before any kind of future global prosperity is possible.
[ 20 September 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]
And you think fusion would end technological imperialism?
We haven't the time to develop fusion, and conservation and renewable energy is far more cost effective.
We won't see any results for fusion to make a difference in our lifetime, no. But I think the next generation is depending on basic research into viable alternatives, closing the nuclear fuel cycle and hydrogen-powered cars. Research takes time and money, and if there is no short-term near-sighted payoff, then big business isn't interested. However, I think we have to begin considering someone else for a change and so do academics and publicly-funded researchers think so. We owe it to the next generations.
And conservation, efficiency and renewables are already on the agenda in most developed countries, but to a lesser degree in Canada. The U.S. State of California is miles ahead of Ontario in this department. Conservation and efficiency have saved Californians the need for 10K MegaWatts of power, the output of three Darlington nuclear power stations. In spite of the successful alternatives to expensive electricity market deregulation schemes like what failed in the U.S. state of California, Ontario's Liberal government will be diving headfirst into more nuclear power expansion without considering renewables or C&E. And if the Liberals don't, the Tories will. Some countries are well ahead of Canada on this front. C&E and renewables are absolutely necessary in the here and now, yes.
[ 20 September 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]
Hugo Blanco, who gave a lecture at Ryerson University last week, had a fantastic anecdote about this. He said that someone connected to Al Gore (can't remember who) who owned an airline said that if he decided to shut down because his product is not environmentally-sustainable, British Airways or American Airlines will just fill in the gaps created by the loss of his company's flights with more flights of his own.
And Blanco said: he's right. That's why individualistic solutions aren't going to work. Many of us are reducing our consumption as individuals - and many others are making up for it by consuming more and more.
Ecosocialism is about recognizing that there is a finite amount of resources on the earth, and you should not be consuming more than your share of them, whether you can "afford it" or not. It's recognizing that ecocapitalist solutions, like carbon credits (where you consume way more than your share, and then pay others to consume less) are not going to work.
It's about not assuming that "market solutions" like consumption taxes are going to work, when the people who are the worst energy consumers are going to continue to be the worst energy consumers because they can afford the taxes.
It's also about fairness. It's about not saying that it's okay for an elite rich class to way overconsume and be "balanced off" by people without enough to eat.
Ecocapitalism won't work because in a capitalist system, there are always people who don't have enough, and they will always want to consume like the overconsumers. And the overconsumers (like Al Gore) will never be able to convince them that they shouldn't want to overconsume, because they don't have the moral authority to tell people that.
Why SHOULDN'T we all live like Al Gore? The reason is obvious. The earth can't sustain it. Ecosocialism recognizes that if it's not okay for everyone to live like Al Gore, then it's not okay for Al Gore to live like Al Gore.
The earth has enough resources for everyone to have a comfortable existence and be sustainable. It's the distribution of those resources that is the problem. And it's the entitlement attitude inherent in capitalism that is the problem - that if you can afford it, you have a right to it. As long as people think that it is moral to trade money for raping the earth of its resources, this problem will never be solved.
[ 22 September 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]
There was an article last month in Wired that speaks to the psychopathy of eco-capitalism:
No. You cannot cut down rainforests to make affordable mahogany Stratocasters. You simply cannot. You cannot drive SUVs in the city. You cannot. There is no acceptable market price for these things, they are simply not allowed. Is this too difficult to understand?
When you buy a tree's worth of lumber, you're not buying a tree. You're buying the labour that went into processing and shipping it. Unfortunately, no one can pay for the tree. The natural resources themselves are "free" to the people who take them. And that's the issue. People who claim that they've "bought and paid for" the goods they own - they haven't. They've bought and paid for the labour that went into processing and shipping the goods they own.
Until people start seeing natural resources as the world's bounty as opposed to property (as in, we're all entitled to use the natural resources as we need them, not as we can afford to pay to process them, and only if we can do it in a sustainable way) then we're going to be in this situation where people who think they "own" trees and rocks and water feel like they can do whatever they want with them, as long as they have enough money.
[ 22 September 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]
Ecosocialism is NOT how things are run in Canada.
Ecosocialism, Green Anarchy, Anarcho-Primitivism and similar theories and ideas have Red Roots.
I think that the quote above is a nice critique of capitalism, environmental destruction and industrialism. It questions how we think about environment and work in a capitalist and (Marxist) socialist mind-frame.
The truth is, if you want participants in a market to change their behaviour in relation to something, you have to give it a price. A ban can be viewed the same as establishing a price, it's just that the price happens to be whatever the fine or sentence costs.
If there is no price for pollution or the unsustainable use of resources, they will be free - and people like to take advantage of what's free.
Unfortunately many of those people occupy positions of power where the decisions are made.
So sin tax it. Like booze and smokes.
But 'ecosocialism' as defined in this thread would not appear to be satisfied with this. To extend the analogy, a carbon tax would be like buying indulgences.
[ 22 September 2007: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]
No.
The same handful of scientists who were paid by big tobacco to defend that bad habit are now in the hire of Exxon/Imperial Oil slash big energy companies to convince us otherwise. People in general are under the impression that there is some kind of scientific debate taking place about the causes of global warming. And there isn't one.
[ 22 September 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]
Trying? We're succeeding only too well, and that's the fucking problem!
If you want to make religious comparisons, then in capitalism consumption is a virtue and the more you consume the more virtuous you are.
After surviving a catastrophic disaster the first thing I always do is buy some jewelry and high-grade electronics devices.
And the shock troops, I mean opportunistic shock doctrinataire capitalists will be there in a jiffy to introduce market solutions to the "clean slate", whether it's a Hurricane disaster or another operation shock and appall over the capital city of an oil-rich nation. NeoLiberal ideologues to the rescue!.
Of course ecosocialism is not a religion. However, just like capitalism, the two perspectives need to resolve man's status and relationships within the environment in order to function.
Go to the Cuba thread if you want to get in your snappy one-liners. They are beneath you here.
Here's the part I really like:
Ha! I got this from a yahoo group on ecosocialism (which, by the way, has an excellent rule: "If you are interested in a conversation about how to accomplish ecosocialism, you're welcome to join. If you are interested in trolling this board or its members by bickering about trivial issues, then please don't bother").
My son looked over my shoulder at the screen and asked me, "Are you on e-Bay?"
I said, "No. I'm on a yahoo group. It's about ecosocialism."
He paused and then said, "Oh. Okay!"
Normally when he doesn't know what a word means, he'll ask, but he didn't bother asking what "ecosocialism" means. Maybe he realized instinctually what a long, boring explanation would follow! [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]
[ 23 September 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]