Capitalism Versus Democracy? Rethinking Politics in the Age of Environmental Crisis by Boris Frankel

Author:Boris Frankel [Frankel, Boris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780648363354
Google: kiixzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Greenmeadows
Published: 2020-11-15T04:24:03+00:00

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two parallel political struggles

We should also recognise that other institutional, production and cultural changes that are necessary to reduce material footprints will be more complex and may take decades longer to achieve. Few supporters of climate emergency action seem aware of the additional challenges, way beyond curbing greenhouse gases. Currently, we are witnessing two parallel political economic struggles that will spark far greater socio-political change in coming years. The first struggle is a familiar conflict that has been ongoing for at least three decades but will reach its most intense stage during the next five to ten years. I refer here to the conflict at national and international levels between the ‘rear-guard’ political parties, business groups, media outlets and think-tanks desperately trying to both delay and prevent the abandonment of fossil-fuels. Tied to this ‘last stand’ politics is a defence of multi-trillion-dollar investments and the desperate need to avoid or delay the restructure of carbon-intensive industries in manufacturing, transport, agriculture, chemicals and so forth. This is a fight that the ‘rear-guard’ cannot win but, unfortunately, will still have the capacity to inflict enormous damage on the biosphere.

The old cliché about generals fighting the previous war applies to numerous business and political leaders as well as to many social change activists. Altered socio-economic and environmental conditions have rendered old strategies and solutions either historically obsolete or only partially effective at best. Many socialists and greens hold onto the belief that capitalist societies will not be able to deal with climate change and that this global crisis will usher in the end of capitalism. Perhaps the failure to act decisively to prevent the havoc resulting from climate breakdown will indeed cause irreparable major political economic crises. However, it would be foolish to think that voters, governments and businesses will sit idly by and allow fossil-fuel industries to create environmental chaos just because these dinosaurs are still powerful in G20 countries. Capitalist businesses and governments have the technical capacity to deal with greenhouse emissions. It is quite another matter when it comes to their ability to adapt to and survive the need to abandon or decelerate incessant material growth.

Hence, the second concurrent and less visible struggle is a more fundamental and far-reaching conflict between ascending pro-market political economic forces promoting ecological modernisation and a range of radical environmentalists and eco-socialists who reject ‘green growth’ as environmentally unsustainable. Ecological modernisers tend to be optimists and assume we can have it all. This naïveté is widespread and is aptly expressed by people such as economics editor for the Sydney Morning Herald, Ross Gittins who believes: “We can have unending growth in GDP and sustainable use of natural resources (which is what the environmentalists care about) by changing the way economic activity is organised – including by getting all our energy from renewable sources.”3 Similarly Pollyannish views in the sustainability of ‘green growth’ are regularly voiced by a mixture of leading international agencies such as the IMF, UN, OECD and pro-business technological innovators and centre-Left parties.

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