How not to tackle climate change

indonesia / philippines / australia | environment | opinion / analysis Monday December 12, 2011 10:22 by MACG - Anarkismo macg10984 at yahoo dot com dot au

We are talking about a revolution in order to save the planet from runaway climate change and prevent the destruction of technically advanced society. Once we have the power to implement the environmental policies that are scientifically necessary, however, we will have the entire political power in our hands. There will be no reason to hand power back to the capitalists after saving the planet and nothing to stop us abolishing capitalism altogether.

The Labor Government's strategy for tackling climate change is just about a textbook example of how not to. In the process, it is delaying meaningful action in Australia and making it harder to isolate a handful of recalcitrant States in the hands of the denial lobby. Given the threat to the planet that runaway climate change embodies, it demonstrates the insanity of capitalism. If a system is not capable of dealing with the environmental crises it generates and guaranteeing the sustainability of society, it does not deserve to endure.

Labor is proposing to institute a carbon tax, at a rate of $23/tonne, on the production of greenhouse gases. After three years, it will turn into a fixed-cap emissions trading scheme. If an emissions-intensive industry is exposed to exports and imports, companies will receive free permits for up to 94.5% of their emissions. Income tax cuts and pension increases will compensate most households for increased prices. It's mathematically clever, and neo-classical economists love it, but it's gone down like a lead balloon with the public and generated extreme excitement amongst listeners to talk-back radio. So what's going on?

The key to the puzzle is the enthusiasm of the economists. Tackling climate change by putting a price on greenhouse emissions is a neo-liberal approach and protects the existing distribution of income and wealth in society. For the rich, the costs are trivial and outweighed by the vista of a new arena for financial speculation. The working class, on the other hand, is dependent on the adequacy and sustainability of the compensation. And this is where the catch comes in.

If the carbon price achieves what it is designed to and eliminates greenhouse emissions from the Australian economy, government revenue from the sale of emissions permits will cease and thus the funding for the compensation will disappear. If the compensation is eroded, the working class will pay the bill for climate change mitigation. If it is maintained, the Government will increase taxes or cut social spending to bring its budget back into balance. Either way, the workers lose.

What needs to be done? First of all, we need an emergency transition to a 100% renewable stationary energy system, along the lines proposed by the Beyond Zero Emissions group. Second, we need a huge expansion and redevelopment of public transport in Australia, to reduce reliance on truck transport and the private car. Third, we need a major overhaul of urban design so that cities and towns have higher population densities, but with improved amenity rather than worse living conditions. Can capitalism deliver this? In theory, yes, since it is possible to imagine how a Greens government could, with determination, get it through the Parliament. Unfortunately, this will remain in the realm of the imagination, for the existing parties and the Big Business lobbies are committed to, at best, the Labor Government's model and, at worst, the fraudulent scheme of the Liberals.

To tackle climate change effectively means defeating the existing capitalist class and its political representatives. It will require a mass movement of the working class and the use of the most effective power that the workers have in society, our ability to cut off the flow of profits to the capitalists. We will have to seize the means of production out of the hands of the capitalists in order to abolish their power to block the necessary actions.

We are talking about a revolution in order to save the planet from runaway climate change and prevent the destruction of technically advanced society. Once we have the power to implement the environmental policies that are scientifically necessary, however, we will have the entire political power in our hands. There will be no reason to hand power back to the capitalists after saving the planet and nothing to stop us abolishing capitalism altogether.

The problem of climate change comes down, therefore, to the class struggle. The Labor Government's scheme is arousing the opposition of those sections of capital which have the most invested in the existing unsustainable economy and they have both the motive and the means to stir up the working class to oppose the attack on their living standards that carbon pricing entails. The only way to tackle the challenge of climate change successfully is to build a movement of the one force on Earth which can defeat the capitalists, the working class. And when we do defeat them, we will not build a "sustainable capitalism", but libertarian communism.

From the newsletter of Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (MACG) “The Anvil" No 8, December 2011.