The “economy” is ultimately our material relationship with each other and with the rest of the living world. As today’s IPCC report settles in, we have to decide whether we want that relationship to be based on extraction and exploitation, or on reciprocity and care.
Jason Hickel, author of Less is More, and The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its solutions.
In 2018, GIMMS’ very first MMT Lens following its launch was entitled ‘The Economics of Climate Change’. In it, we reported on the just-published IPCC’s report on the state of the climate. Scientists warned that we only had 12 years left to halt the worst effects of climate change. The evidence even then was stark, and the clock is still ticking on the capacity of our natural world to support life.
As the world is beset by extreme temperatures, drought, wildfires, and floods, on Monday the UN-led IPCC issued its sixth and latest report, the work of 230 authors from 65 countries. It set out unambiguously the current state of the climate, and what steps we need to take to avert planetary catastrophe. The key takeaway from the report was that we have no more time to lose, and we must act with urgency. If we fail to do so, further climate changes are inevitable and will be irreversible. The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres said ‘the IPCC report is code red for humanity. Alarm bells are deafening and evidence irrefutable; greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk.’
In anticipation of the report’s publication, Alok Sharma, the UK Minister presiding over the UN’s COP 26 climate talks in November, who is part of a government as always hot on easy rhetoric said: ‘This is going to be the starkest warning yet, that human behaviour is alarmingly accelerating global warming […]. We can’t afford to wait two years, five years 10 years – this is the moment’.
If your eyes aren’t out on stalks by now they should be! This really is a bit rich when the facts have been known for decades and conveniently shelved by successive governments of all shades, as being too hard to deal with and a threat to growth and company profits. We all know in whose pockets politicians lie. Little has been achieved and now we are in the last chance saloon. Saying we can’t afford to wait would be almost laughable if it weren’t so serious.
Politicians and corporations sell us the miracles of technological solutions, many of which are still on the drawing board and promote offsetting carbon emissions through such programmes as tree planting. The claimed answer to the capitalist prayer of business as usual.
As Oxfam noted earlier in the month when it published its report, ‘Tightening the Net: Net zero climate targets implications for land and food equity’, just planting millions of trees to tackle the climate crisis is simplistic, given the huge amount of land that would be needed to offset global greenhouse gas emissions, which would, in turn, impact on the amount of land for crops at a time when climate change is already a growing threat to global food production and increasing levels of hunger.
And that doesn’t even reflect the growing knowledge about trees and the complexity of the environments in which they can exist successfully. Monoculture tree plantations are man-made and bear no relationship with old-growth forest with all the complexity of hundreds of years of growth and biodiversity. The land of easy solutions and a disappointing failure to grasp the reality of what we must do. Cut emissions urgently.
Danny Sriskandarajah, chief executive of Oxfam called, instead, for companies and governments to cut their emissions radically, rather than depending on offset, saying ‘Too many companies and governments are hiding behind the smokescreen of ‘net zero’ to continue dirty ‘business-as-usual activities’.
We are living in the golden era of greenwashing. A world in which the rich and powerful sell us the idea that we can have it all. This week, Linton Besser, Foreign correspondent for the Australian news network ABC, published his article entitled ‘Dead white man’s clothes’, and revealed the dirty secret, as he called it, behind the world’s fashion addiction, with many of the clothes we donate to charity ending up dumped in landfill, thus, and not for the first time, creating an environmental catastrophe on the other side of the world. For example, plastic and other waste dumped in other nations – out of sight, out of mind.
Those on social media cannot fail to note the incessant sales pitches of ‘save the planet’ and buy ‘green, ethically produced’ clothing. As the environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg noted this week:
‘Many are making it look as if the fashion industry is starting to take responsibility, by spending fantasy amounts on campaigns where they portray themselves as ‘sustainable’, ‘ethical’, ‘green’, ‘climate neutral’ and ‘fair’. But let’s be clear: This is almost never anything but pure greenwashing. You cannot mass produce fashion or consume ‘sustainably’ as the world is shaped today. That is one of the many reasons why we will need a system change.
The fashion industry is a huge contributor to the climate-and-ecological emergency, not to mention its impact on the countless workers and communities who are being exploited around the world in order for some to enjoy fast fashion that many treat as disposable’.
It is indeed the golden era of greenwashing. Selling us ethical dreams tidied up in greenwashed advertising from clothing to electric cars, tree planting and eating choices (to justify that next purchase and give us a warm glow). How quickly the advertisers catch on. As the fate of humanity lies in the balance, the money makers continue to wallow in the hubris that we are gods with rights over nature and human beings to exploit and grow without end.
As Mark Blyth wrote this week in an opinion piece in the Guardian:
‘Instead, of telling us that we need to truly transform the way we live and organise society, we will be told that we can still carry on as we were, except perhaps with our fossil fuels and one-use goods replaced with green energy and recyclables. Maybe a bit less air travel, but still ‘back to normal’ with green edges.
This way of thinking is perhaps as dangerous as the climate crisis itself. While banging on about inflation as a threat to the poor, is a rhetoric of reaction, getting back to normal is a rhetoric of distraction.’
Except that we can’t afford to continue as we are, or be distracted.
While the government expresses its commitment to action, the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), working in partnership with Vivid Economics, has revealed that only a small fraction of the budget had been pledged for new policies to tackle climate change, and that a substantial amount more had been apportioned towards measures that could push up emissions. It warned that despite the Government advisors’ estimate that investment of 1% of GDP a year from the public and private sector is needed to reduce emissions to net-zero, the policies announced in the budget actually equated to just 0.01%.
Isabella O’Dowd, who is head of climate change at the WWF, said that ‘It’s not too late to prevent global warming from rising above 1.5%, it is in our hands. But to do that, the UK government must play its part by keeping every climate promise it has made’. She went on to note that ‘The spring budget showed a disconnect between the government’s rhetoric and the reality of what it’s doing. The ambition [on emissions-cutting targets] is great, but now we really need to see the policies that will deliver.’
Disconnect? Chasm more like. The word ‘ambition’ seems incongruous here too. The government’s ambition is confined to fine words and not much else, as the WWF shows in its analysis.
There can now be no mistaking the seriousness of the situation. Whilst action should have begun decades ago, when the first warnings were being aired, we must now grasp the nettle for our children’s children.
There is an alternative to the path being promoted by governments across the globe, governments who are the lackeys of global corporates through their spending and legislative choices and bypass democracy at every level. And yet it seems the media, despite the clarity of the seriousness of the situation we face, can’t get enough of the messages that claim that financial Armageddon is on the way if we don’t get our public finances under control.
This week, Gerard Lyons headed his article in The Times, ‘Now is the time to tighten monetary policy’. No, it is not! It is time to do the opposite. The Chancellor is just as penny-pinching and anxious to secure his reputation for fiscal discipline, and, perhaps, his future political career.
The reported row between Boris Johnson and his Chancellor suggested that the Prime Minister was ready to sack him over disagreements about spending on the NHS and his levelling up agenda.
In the Telegraph this week, it was suggested that Rishi Sunak should embark on a round of free market, deregulating liberalism, and reduce state intervention and spending, to keep his party members and backers happy.
It beggars belief that people would actually support someone who is openly talking about how he is going to get the public finances back in order, although it is understandable given the false narratives about how the government spends.
Clearly, his ‘Eat out to Help out’ discount has clouded some people’s views, and the collective memory banks seem to be rather short, in some cases, on the lived consequences of austerity and public policy. The cuts to public sector services, social security and infrastructure, along with employment policies that have kept wages low and people living precariously, have been so damaging to the economy, and the lives of working people and their families.
Never mind the fact that poverty is rife and growing, people are hungry and homeless, that our public and social infrastructure is in a state of decay as a result of 10 years of government spending decisions and policies. Austerity. Sawing one’s legs off in one easy action. So, why not have some more? And that is without factoring in the urgency of addressing climate change, which was so clearly laid out on Monday. It is astonishing that some advocate a ‘return’ (did it ever go away?) to less state intervention, to market ideology and more growth, when clearly it has been very damaging to growing numbers of citizens and to the planet, whilst enriching a few others beyond belief.
In good times and bad, it is only the government that has the capacity to spend and legislate for change within the context of available resources, but whilst Rishi Sunak continues to promote fiscal discipline and getting the public finances on a ‘sound footing’, we are wasting valuable time. And it would seem that the mantra of ‘business as usual’ prevails both in spending policies and ideology, to the delight of business advertising and public relations executives, busily working out their greenwashing agendas.
We should stop asking where the financing will come from and ask the important questions about national priorities instead. As Professor Stephanie Kelton, author of The Deficit Myth puts it:
‘Are these things worth doing and do we have the real resources—the people, the equipment, the raw materials, and the technology—to do them? Will they make society better off, and do we have the political will to act?’
As an editorial in the Guardian noted this week:
‘The state is, clearly, not powerless against global capital. During Covid it paid for millions of workers without breaking a sweat. Contrary to conventional thinking there was no threat from rising deficits to interest rates. Thatcherism was defined by Nigel Lawson as “increasing freedom for markets to work within a framework of firm monetary and fiscal discipline”. This saw the state put in service of business interests rather than mediating between labour and capital. It also left Britain woefully unprepared, and ill-equipped, for the pandemic. A Thatcherite approach will not produce a fairer distribution of growth. It will militate against support during downturns and plans to “level up” the regions. Ministers ought to outline a new role for the state rather than relying on failed ideas about what the market can do.’
On the one hand, we have those who note the future monetary cost of doing nothing, implying we could make savings on future public spending if we act now, as if governments are monetarily embarrassed, which we know they are not. On the other, Sunak is still counting the Treasury beans and stressing the need for fiscal restraint to determine if we can afford to act. And according to some experts, the Treasury is blocking those green policies vital to the government’s claimed commitment to net-zero emissions. This week, Nicholas Stern, author of a 2006 study into the costs of climate change, reinforced the message that the UK cannot fight the climate crisis with austerity and trying to do so would put the green agenda in jeopardy.
Sunak has contrarily claimed this week that the UK would not see a return to the austerity policies of the last decade, promising to rebuild the economy after the pandemic. Suddenly in step with the incumbent of No.10? Which is it Mr Sunak? Having already cut foreign aid spending, and frozen pay for some public sector workers on the basis of keeping public expenditure down, it will remain to be seen whether it’s just more electoral rhetoric of the Johnson kind, which will be abandoned when it suits, remembering he has to keep Conservative voters and backers happy. But it’s true to say he can’t have it both ways. Government spending for the public purpose and austerity are mutually exclusive propositions. We should perhaps, therefore, ask a different question. Who would be the beneficiary of the public purse? The last year should give us an indication. The Corporations.
At the same time, those very same actors continue to talk in terms of the risk to economic growth if we fail to act, with little reference to the threat to the planet and human existence as we know it, or the idea that we can have unrestrained growth and call it green.
If we want any sort of future for our children, the cost of counting beans instead of planetary health will be huge. Continuing to promote the message that with green growth we can have it all, is equally to wilfully misunderstand the vastness of the challenge we face, in terms of real resources and addressing the already high costs of an economic system which is based on the exploitation of human beings.
Climate action may be a bargain, but not a monetary one in terms of future fiscal savings. It is a bargain in terms of human existence and planetary well-being. We can talk glowingly about creating a green economy, but until the government sets out detailed policy proposals, having already been widely criticised in many quarters for its failure to do so, real change will not happen.
Such action must form part of a holistic strategy, directed by central government and flowing down to our communities and every aspect of our lives. It must take account of the lives of working people and the vast inequalities that have arisen over decades and will continue to rise if we do nothing. It must provide appropriate regulation and finance, as only the currency-issuing capacity of government can do, to ensure the innovation that could undoubtedly be unlocked by a government committed to change.
Despite Alok Sharma’s warnings prior to the publication of the IPCC report, the reality is that so far little commitment has been made, and the political will to act is shallow. We are scarcely off the starting blocks in terms of the action that needs to happen. A revolution in the way we live. That revolution must start with the basics of how governments spend.
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