sunlore wrote:
Meanwhile, cap-and-trade is key to the Kyoto program. Honest question: do you suggest we should reverse it?
No, but it's telling that even the most pathetic and demonstrably insufficient measures (those of Kyoto, Bali, etc) have had little success in implementation. This constant recourse to
faith in capitalist solutions to capitalism should be seen for what it is: the foreclosure of genuine possibilities.
First off, there are multiple points of entry in this discussion. I thought the theoretical/radical ground had been thoroughly covered, and you should realize that my comment was more informed by pragmatism than by credulity or ideology. I maintain that there may be a real possibility of a more sustainable capitalism by way of a commodification of environmentally sound initiatives. This of course doesn't mean I am not sceptical. I mean, I am. And for sure, I didn't mean the point to be the be all end all of the matter.
I agree it can be useful to bracket reality and talk about what's practicable within given coordinates, but it's difficult to commodify restraint: Capitalism is about more, about excess, not less. Cap-and-trade will be
great for Monsanto and awful for sustainable agriculture and local economies. Cap-and-trade - because it is a "market solution" rather than an actual political-economic intervention - has lateral "externalities" in deforestation, escalating food costs, and further "accumulation by dispossession" in the global south. It imposes an artificial scarcity in one realm, hence the explosion of (unsustainable) capitalist production and exploitation in others. Biofuels put a further strain on earth's fresh water resources, which are themselves in the process of rapid commodification by agribusiness itself. Perhaps we're witnessing a theoretical pivot from Big Oil to Big Agribusiness. Is this really - even in theory - a move to something more sustainable?
The cap-and-trade argument is that increased commodification can help to save the global commons. This is argumentative quicksand, to say the least.
The evidence is scant
Damningly so. Instead of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic this advocates ripping out chunks of the hull - and pillaging planks from the junks of distant boat people - to build more "green" deck chairs.
but look at recent developments with regard to tobacco legislation: within the next few years, smoking will be completely banned from public spaces in most of the EU and North America. Where is the tobacco lobby in all of this? Either they are somehow less dependent on growth and happy to scale back, or there is a real-world possibly of taking on mcCapital in the face of "environmental" issues.
Tobacco is an interesting case, I agree. Of course, tobacco's relation to global transport and industrial infrastructure is not that of coal, oil, etc. It's not an analogous commodity. And, characteristically, anti-smoking and anti-tobacco mobilization finds much of its leverage in directly addressing the health of individual consumers. And I'm reminded of how long the false intervention of "light" cigarettes forestalled the inevitable: Go Toyota Prius.
Edit: "junks" not junkies" <cough>