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Communists stand full-square against this tide of historical pessimism
and environmentalist catastrophism, which, yes, means we have to
swing against the stream - never an easy or inviting task. Marxism
is relentlessly anthropocentric (or ‘speciesist’) and
hence optimistic - not in some fatuous Panglossian way, or brainless
Soviet-type bureaucratic manner, but simply in the sense that we
communists adamantly believe that humanity, through the revolutionary
agency of the working class, can make a world fit to live in. That
means we must challenge the agenda of the reactionary misanthropes
and counterpose our red environmentalism to their green environmentalism.
For a lesson in pessimism it is instructive to look at the following
passage from the book Our angry Earth, co-authored by the eminent
science-fiction authors, Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl: “It
is already too late to save our planet from harm. Too much has happened
already: farms have turned into deserts, forests have been clear-cut
to wasteland, lakes have been poisoned, the air is filled with harmful
gases. It is even too late to save ourselves from the effects of
other harmful processes, for they have already been set in motion,
and will inevitably take their course. The global temperature will
rise. The ozone layer will continue to fray. Pollution will sicken
or kill more and more living creatures. All those things have already
gone so far that they must now inevitably get worse before they
can get better. The only choice left to us is to decide how much
worse we are willing to let things get” (New York 1991, preface).
Now, no one can accuse Asimov and Pohl of being crusty reactionaries
filled with a hatred of science and technology. In fact, somewhat
unusually for so-called ‘golden age’ (c1930s-1950s) American
science fiction authors, both of them were on the left - Pohl was
even a member of the Communist Party of the United States before
he was expelled for “Trotskyist deviationism” in 1939,
when he made the mistake of openly questioning the wisdom of the
Nazi-Soviet pact (and went on to become the co-author with CJ Kornbluth
of the classic sci-fi novel, The space merchants, an effective satire
on 1950s consumer-boom America). The observations of Asimov and
Pohl are filled with a passionate, sincere and quite understandable
fury at the way of the world around them. Regrettably though, their
cry of lamentation is animated by the sort of bleak inevitabilism
that The day after tomorrow plays upon.
Almost a century and a half ago, the still idealistic Thomas Carlyle
memorably described economics as “the dismal science”.
The term was to stick, especially as it applied to economics premised
on a supposedly unavoidable conflict between “insatiable needs”
and “scarce natural resources”. In this economics, the
limited bounty provided by a supposedly “stingy nature”
doomed humanity to economic slumps, misery, civil strife and hunger.
Sound familiar? In the long-held view of the anarchist/left libertarian
ecologist, Murray Bookchin, whose substantial works deserve to be
seriously studied by Marxists, environmentalism is in constant danger
of being ‘hijacked’ by neo-Malthusians and miserabilists.
As Bookchin writes, “Today, the term ‘dismal science’
appropriately describes certain trends in the ecology movement -
trends that seem to be riding on an overwhelming tide of religious
revivalism and mysticism. I refer not to the large number of highly
motivated, well-intentioned, and often radical environmentalists
who are making earnest efforts to arrest the ecological crisis,
but rather to exotic tendencies that espouse deep ecology, biocentrism,
Gaian consciousness and eco-theology, to cite the main cults that
celebrate a quasi-religious ‘reverence’ for ‘Nature’
with what is often a simultaneous denigration of human beings and
their traits” (see http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/Bookchinarchive.html
and also Bookchin’s definitive study, Re-enchanting humanity:
a defense of the human spirit against anti-humanism, misanthropy,
mysticism and primitivism London 1995).
Bookchin’s description reminds me of a Greenpeace leaflet that
came my way some 10 years ago. The front of it showed a picture
of the Earth taken from outer-space - radiating innocence, splendour
and beauty. As the leaflet explained, this is how things were for
millions of years. Then - turn to the next page of the leaflet -
things get grim. Big time. Yes, humankind arrived like a pestilence
and started to bugger things up. As the leaflet ruefully admitted,
we will never be able to return to the original state of innocence
- the corruption has set in too deep - but maybe, just maybe, we
can roll history back just a bit and try to eradicate the baleful
legacy of the industrial revolution. Maybe I was naive young thing
back then, but I can recall being shocked by the anti-anthropocentrism
of the Greenpeace leaflet.
Another significant development - and one monumental in its hypocrisy,
of course - is the ‘greening’ of big business. For many
capitalists the green vocabulary comes with ease, and you can see
why. If the historical specificity of capitalism and exploitative
class society can be denied, dissolved into an ahistorical, timeless,
classless ‘Humanity’, then the idea of real change - socialism,
for example - becomes a quixotic dream, if not the ravings of deranged
lunatics who want to upset the natural order of things.
We can see this ideological trick in an almost chemically pure form
in the 2001 special edition of Time magazine. Now, this is not an
organ noted for its progressive or anti-capitalist opinions, yet
here we find it in full-on mode, railing about the hopeless condition
we have somehow got ourselves into:
“Throughout the past century humanity did everything in its
power to dominate nature. We dammed earth’s rivers, chopped
down the forests and depleted the soils. Burning up fossil fuels
that had been created over aeons, we pumped billions of tons of
greenhouse gases into the air, altering atmospheric chemistry and
appreciably warming the planet in just a few decades. And, as our
population began the year 2000 above the six billion mark, still
spreading across the continents, dozens of animal and plant species
were going extinct every day, including the first primate to disappear
in more than 100 years, the red colobus. At the start of the 21st
century there were unmistakable signs that exploitation of the planet
was reaching its limit - that nature was beginning to take its revenge”
- and so on.
It almost goes without saying that capitalism and class society
is not in any way responsible for the mess so graphically portrayed
above by the impossibly anguished Time journalist. No, what else
would you expect from a “humanity” which has the arrogance
to “dominate nature” and continue “spreading across
the continents”?
Salvation then it seems, if there is any, lies in the hands of a
few enlightened individuals - who just so happen to be immensely
wealthy. The loathsome features of the animal-loving, ultra-misanthropic
‘ecologist’, the multi-millionaire Sir Jerry Goldsmith,
suddenly come to mind. More recently though, we had the wonderful
front-page headline in The Guardian, ‘Oil chief: my fears for
the planet’ (June 17). We go on to read that Ron Oxburgh, chairman
of Shell, is “really very worried for the planet”.
According to the anxious Oxburgh, we urgently need to capture emissions
of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, and store them underground
- in a technique known as carbon sequestration. Oxburgh further
comments that many developing countries - including India and China
- are sitting on huge, untapped stocks of coal, probably the most
polluting fossil fuel, saying: “If they choose to burn their
coal, we in the west are not in a very good position to tell them
not to, because it’s exactly what we did in our industrial
revolution.” Oxburgh gloomily concludes: “Sequestration
is difficult, but if we don’t have sequestration then I see
very little hope for the world.”
So, what “little hope” the world has lies in the hands
of capitalist-employed scientists, engineers, technicians, technocrats,
etc. Presumably ‘true’ salvation lies in the hands of
Shell and not with any of its rivals and competitors. The working
class in India and China do not get a look in, nor does the possibility
of a democratic re-ordering of the world, so that power lies with
the direct producers and not the appropriators.
Shell of course is now very much a ‘green’ company - so
much so in fact that you could almost call it ‘officially’
green. Virtually no Shell-organised event or presentation is complete
these days without a very discernible green logo or symbol. Shell’s
makeover has certainly impressed Robin Oakley, a senior figure in
Greenpeace, who claims that a gulf is opening up between the more
‘progressive’ (read: green) oil companies such as Shell
- which invests in alternative energy sources, including wind and
solar power - and Exxon Mobil, the biggest and most influential
producer, particularly in the United States. ‘Green’ capitalism
has come of age.
Most worryingly, green nostrums and even orthodoxies have seeped
into our movement. Yes, the much vaunted ‘greening’ of
the left - unfortunately. This dramatically reveals the dislocated
and disorientated state of large segments of the left - which has
lost confidence in itself, Marxism and the ability of the working
class to transform society on a world scale. Inevitably, pessimistic
ideas and doctrines start to creep in and displace the scientific
socialism ethos and our proletarian ‘unofficial optimism’.
Take the specific issue of global warming, the ostensible subject
matter of The day after tomorrow. It is now tantamount to a received
opinion on the left, as it is in wider society, that the various
theses underpinning the idea of global warming are the gospel truth
and that to express any counter-ideas must be a disturbing sign
of reactionary or rightwing sentiments - whether incipient or full-blown.
So in the world according Socialist Worker, The Socialist, etc,
the Kyoto protocol has become a totemic symbol that distinguishes
between good and evil. Bush must be a bastard because his administration
has not signed up to the ‘pledge’ to reduce carbon emissions.
Of course, Bush is a bastard and no doubt his reasons for pooh-poohing
the Kyoto protocol were selfish and venal. However, that does not
mean that signing up to Kyoto and all its works would not make him
a bastard.
Clearly, the whole debate around global warming - or not - is complex
and open-ended. The evidence does appear to suggest - quite heavily
- that over the last 150 years there has been a rise in temperature:
about 0.6°C, to use a commonly quoted figure. However, this
need not represent a catastrophe - hence the sometimes heated debate.
Effectively the real dispute is over the extent to which human activity
- air and road transport, domestic heating, power stations, industry,
agriculture, etc - is to blame, and whether or not increases will
continue and trigger a dramatic feedback effect - ie, cold, non-saline,
water from melting Arctic and Antarctica ice sheets halts warm ocean
currents and brings about a new ice age, the scenario depicted in
The day after tomorrow.
There is, though, nothing unusual about climate change per se. It
has never ceased, is ongoing and must therefore be considered inevitable
- in that sense, it must be considered natural. Notions of fixing
in place the climate as it now is, or returning it to a pre-industrial
ideal - as outlined in my Greenpeace leaflet of old - through some
kind of human exodus, are both misplaced and doomed to fail. To
boldly say so should not be taken as heresy.
Take the now controversial Bjorn Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace,
ex-director of the Environmental Assessment Institute (the Danish
government’s advice agency) and author of the 2001 bestseller,
The sceptical environmentalist. For his views Lomborg has been castigated
for being “scientifically dishonest”, a wretched renegade
and a reactionary swine to boot. As The Guardian insouciantly put
it, “His work made him popular with the rightwing establishment”
(June 17). Why such opprobrium? It is Lomborg’s contention
that the concerns expressed about melting ice caps, deforestation
and acid rain are “exaggerated” - arguing that the Earth
“overall” was getting cleaner, and that humankind “in
general” is getting healthier and richer.
Scandalous? Any Marxist who immediately dismisses such views as
“rightwing” is surely not much of a Marxist - more of
a hopeless dogmatist. Naturally, Lomborg’s ideas and theories
need to be approached critically, but there is surely a kernel of
truth to them. In very broad historical terms, there is a lot of
truth to his words - there has been progress. But by its very nature,
the antagonistic capitalist system threatens to undermine and destroy
the gains that have been made over the centuries and decades.
Take air pollution - an example often cited by Lomborg. Of all the
different types of pollution affecting human health, air pollution
ranks as just about the worse. Of all the major US Environmental
Protection Agency statute areas (air, water, pesticides, conservation,
drinking water, toxic control, liability) and even by the agency’s
own reckoning, 86-96% of all social benefits stem from the regulation
of air pollution. We often assume that air pollution is a modern
phenomenon, and that it has got worse in recent times. However,
it has actually been a major nuisance for most of civilisation and
in fact the air of the western world has not been as clean as it
is now for a long time.
In ancient Rome, the statesman Seneca complained about “the
stink, soot and heavy air” in the city. In 1257, when the Queen
of England visited Nottingham, she found the stench of smoke from
coal burning so intolerable that she left for fear of her life.
By 1285 London’s air was so polluted that King Edward I established
the world’s first air pollution commission. Coming nearer to
the present day, not for nothing did Shelley write: “Hell must
be much like London, a smoky and populous city.” For London,
the consequences were dire. Whereas throughout the 18th century
London was foggy 20 days a year, this had increased to almost 60
days by the end of the 19th. Now London air is relatively clean.
Pollution, then, is no modern capitalist evil.
Lomborg also asserts that the Kyoto protocol is a waste of money
- quite literally. Kyoto requires that industrial states reduce
greenhouse emissions by 2012 to pre-1990s levels. In a public debate
- or ‘row’, as the press prefer to say - with Klaus Toepfer,
the UN environment chief, Lomborg boldly stated: “Kyoto would
cost at least $150 billion a year, yet merely postpone global warming
for six years. The family in Bangladesh who will get flooded will
have an extra six years to move.” In other words, implementing
the Kyoto protocol on carbon dioxide emissions is likely to cost
$161-$346 billion, and yet the average temperature of the Earth
will probably be about the same in 2100 with Kyoto as in 2094 without
it.
By contrast, argues Lomborg, several million deaths could be prevented
each year by securing clean drinking water and sanitation for everyone
at a one-off cost of $200 billion. In this vein, the Environmental
Assessment Institute organised a conference last month where economists
ranked fighting Aids and malnutrition and making foreign trade easier
as far more cost-effective ways of improving the world than combating
global warming.
“Rightwing”? “Reactionary”? It is more than
likely that many of Lomborg’s ideas are inadequate or flawed
in some way. But the stubborn fact remains that his ideas need to
be rationally engaged with by the left - not become the object of
censorship or a witch-hunt. Truth is many-sided and arrives from
the open clash of different and contending ideas, not from imposing
a mental straight-jacket.
A long time ago, Thomas Münzer, the Anabaptist leader of the
German peasant revolution, pinpointed in his pamphlet against Luther
the root cause of the advancing social evil in quite tangible terms,
diagnosing it as the cult of universal saleability and alienation.
He concluded his discourse by saying how intolerable it was “that
every creature should be transformed into property - the fishes
in the water, the birds of the air, the plants of the earth”
(quoted by Marx in his essay The Jewish question - emphasis added).
As István Mészáros points out, “This was
a far-sighted identification of what was to unfold with all-engulfing
power in the course of the next three centuries … For, once
the social trend of universal saleability triumphs, in tune with
the inner requirements of capital’s social formation, what
appeared to Münzer as the gross violation of the natural order
(and, as we know, ultimately endangers the very existence of humankind)
now seems self-evidently natural, unalterable, and acceptable to
the thinkers who unreservedly identify themselves with the historically
created (and in principle likewise removable) constraints of capital’s
fully developed social order” (Monthly Review December 2001).
For communists genuine “sustainable development” cannot
come about without the removal of the paralysing constraints of
the adversarial capitalist system. This immediately, and unavoidably,
raises the question of substantive equality and the fight for socialism.
For sustainability means being really in control of the vital social,
economic and cultural processes, through which human beings not
merely survive but can and should also find fulfilment, in accordance
with the designs which they set themselves, instead of being at
the mercy of unpredictable natural forces and what Mészáros
labels “quasi-natural socio-economic determinations”.
Yes, it is extremely bad news for Shell and Mr Oxburgh. To ‘save
the planet’ we need a communist world.
Eddie Ford
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