My friend and Green New Deal colleague, Andrew Simms, had an excellent article in the Guardian yesterday in which he pointed out that best estimates suggest yesterday was the day when the planet as a whole consumed more this year than could be replenished from the resources the earth has available to it.
It's a worrying trend for those concerned about sustainability as we have been in ecological deficit since the 70s, and have got worse this year by 2 days compared to 2012. As Andrew put it:
"Live without limits" is the slogan of Jeep, makers of archetypal, gas guzzling off-road vehicles. However, if you tried to, you wouldn't live very long. By accumulating too much ecological debt, we are losing the climate to which we are adapted. Historically speaking, the public debt is at relatively low levels, while our ecological debt is larger than ever and growing. That is the issue that should be at the top of the political agenda.
I agree, but the hegemony of market based thinking seeks to deny that there are any such limits or that there is an issue to be faced.
That is one of the many reasons why one day we will need to hold those who have promoted such false thinking to account. For now, we need to make clear to the world that firstly such 'free' market thinking is actually an exercise in exploiting the planet and the generations to come, and secondly, that there are alternatives.
That's task enough for the moment.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
What does this mean:
“That is one of the many reasons why one day we will need to hold those who have promoted such false thinking to account.”
Up against the wall or what?
How about throwing their thinking out and naming it for what it is?
As a Quaker I try not to do violence
On the subject of hegemony, Richard, my attention was caught by this paper being presented at an upcoming British Sociological Association event. Unfortunately I can’t go as I’m out of the country, but it would certainly be interesting to hear what Mark has to say.
Mark Cresswell Durham University
‘PEDAGOGY of the PRIVILEGED: Elite Universities and Dialectical Contradictions in the UK’
This co-authored paper considers the role and function of Left academics within ‘elite’ (i.e. Russell Group) universities within
the UK. Deploying Marxist theory and critical realism, it analyses the ‘dialectical contradictions’ experienced in such a role and
reflects upon productive strategies for resisting the hegemony of neo-liberalism within those milieus.
Ask for the paper!
Can i have a copy?
Tried a quick look on Durham’s website but no obvious,link to the paper.
But an interesting ‘Guest Post’ by Professor Jonathan Bradshaw on ‘Britain’s Broken Tax System’:
http://northeastchildpoverty.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/britains-broken-tax-system/
If the graph’s are right, it’s a very inequitable tax system.
The graphs are right
Ivan, if Mark wants any ‘productive strategies’, can you pass on my suggestion that he ditches words and expressions like dialectical contradictions, pedagogy, critical realism, hegemony, and especially milieus. What does any of that mean?
If he means that the neoliberals have been hogging just about everything and making our lives miserable, but we should find ways to stand up and resist, well, yeah, Richard Murphy and I have both being saying this for years, but in much clearer language.
Mark’s ideas may be brilliant, but he is sending the world a clear message he really doesn’t want too many people to agree with them.
If we on the left have any hope, plain language for simple folk is a must.
We may not have to worry for much longer. the Japanese gov have just raised the disaster scenario at Fukushimna to level 3. The spent fuel pool at reactor 4 is near collapse, with 400 tonnes of fuel elements stored there, and no way to remove it since the automated racking was damaged in the overheating when the earthquake drained the pool of coolant. If it collapses (and many say “when” not “if”) the exclusion zone will probably include Tokyo.
Wow! And the what is the government’s response to this? The Japanese population isn’t panicking?
The Japanese have a superb grasp of technology – witness how they have dominated so much of the world electronics market for example.But culturally do not seem to want to accept the shame of failure,in this case to solve the huge problems looming at Fukushima and seek help from outside. I fear they will have to – lets hope as soon as possible.
I hope we can adjust to a new type of sensible ‘frugality’ in the future, by jettisoning false needs and investing in a meaningful future. This could have a profound effect on economic activity. The three cars and foreign holidays that don’t benefit local communities might need to go! It can be intellectually stimulating to cut back on things! Maybe a lot of high tech junk can be left to fade away. This way, the addiction to credit and acquisitiveness might wane – it would take a psychological sea change.
I agree, Andrew totally nails it in his article.
He lays bare the sheer stupidity of fixating on that mere made-up artifact we call money whilst the very real existential threat to our biosphere is ignored.
Unfortunately for us the entire political mainstream is now populated by the wrong people – not genuine leaders who might otherwise have questioned this idiocy, but brainwashed clones usually blessed with exceptional PR skills and the positive advantage of a complete lack of life experience outside politics.
Our only hope as far as I can see is change from below such as the recent anti-fracking protests led by Green MP Caroline Lucas.
There’s an interesting article on fracking by William Enghdahl – America: the New Saudi Arabia? (http://www.voltairenet.org/article177874.html). It seems the whole fracking industry is about to go bust(at least in the U.S. anyway).
I would take anything that Voltaire publishes with a pinch of salt. They are an Iranian backed network – operating out of Beirut – and they hate the Saudis, amongst others, including the USA. Last year, they published a huge story on how Bandar Bin Sultan had been assassinated, which turned out to be completely untrue. Earlier this year they aid that another member of the Saudi Royal Family was under house arrest; again completely untrue. However, fracking does come with some pretty questionable side effects.
Only as long as prices remain low. Prices are expected to rise very soon, and double [at least] by 2015.
The risks attached to fracing are largely hyper-inflated, funnily enough the “risks” have only risen since fracing gained publicity, although the process has been around for decades, seemingly with few events to mark its presence. And some 200 wells in the UK, out of some 2500, have been fraced over the years.
Unless you haven’t heard, drilling has started at Balcombe again….
What is your argument?
This is as absent one as a Tony Blair sentence was absent of verbs
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23756320
Maybe we need a war-time approach: By reigning in consumption (non-volitional during the war) as much as we can we can start saving and bring about price deflation which then might be a stimulus to the reallocation of resources.
My argument?
Against the fracking industry going broke in the US?
That as the prices are, at the moment, the companies make little profit. Not enough to commence prospecting again. But prices will not remain low. If they cannot produce and make a profit, they will stop production and prices will rise…international prices are not going to drop substantially, and home produced is a quarter the price of imported, so there is leeway for a substantial rise in home-produced.
In the UK however, prices will start high and remain so. The government will ensure that, since the landowner in the UK does not own underground resources.
As to risks, they are overstated. the rather well-produced film featuring flaming taps was a laugh….the water came from an aquifer that featured naturally occurring methane, and the water system had a header to allow methane to be vented…….no fracking was done anywhere near the place. Even labour, in the unlikely event of them being elected, will not be able to halt production. (The Scottish independence lot are 5-points ahead of the no vote at the moment). And that takes no account of the rather large scale gerrymandering about to start in England.
It will be interesting to see how a modern industrial economy can run when electricity is much higher priced than abroad…..even Germany is moving industries to low-cost-energy countries.
It is massive debt and the pursuit of ever higher profits that drives us in the “growth forever” cycle of needless production.
With modern technology and productive working practices, we could reduce working hours considerably and we could still produce more than we could ever need.
If we get rid of the zero sum game that is the so-called “free market”, shrink the financial sector and put capital controls in place, and more importantly, try to get rid of debt as the driving force of money creaton, working hours could be drastically reduced, to the benefit of people’s health and well being and not least, the environment.
We would need to reclaim democracy from the corporations and the banks to do so, though!
Growth forever is killing us! It needs to be cancelled!
“reduce working hours considerably”
Idle hands start thinking about why, exactly, we need such a large inefficient government staffed by people who get paid from taxes, but owe their allegiance to people who pay little tax.
A very short step from that to revolution.
Keep them hungry, poor, sick, anxious and working 80 hours a week for as little as possible. Then feed them a diet of televised propaganda and boring soaps. Job done.