To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
August 21, 2021
RE: Planning, not carbon pricing, not the carbon tax
by Tim Hall, Detroit Workers' Voice
As the climate crisis intensifies, there is a major fight over what measures to take. The corporate and establishment environmentalists are still putting forward market measures, from carbon offsets to reliance on the carbon tax, but these measures have failed in the past and can't provide the rapid cuts in carbon emissions that are needed. Indeed, the left-wing economist Michael Roberts devotes more than half of his recent article to showing that carbon pricing, including the carbon tax, will not work. This makes it important to see what should replace market measures.
Roberts stresses planning, and this is what sets his article part. Planning is contrary to market methods, which rely on the “Invisible Hand” of the market to make decisions over human life and survival. Finally some people are beginning to reject this inhuman approach to global heating and call for governments, which they apparently think represent the people, to make economic decisions. But Roberts see no further than nationalization and directing investment funds.
Let's look more closely at what planning becomes in Roberts' hands.
One might think, living the U.S., that the first thing that might be demanded from a plan to fight global heating would be regulations. That is traditionally how U.S. politics go. What is the alternative to market methods? Roberts asks. But does he call for regulations? Well, no. He quotes Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England and U.N. Negotiator on climate affairs:
"We need clear, credible and predictable regulation
from government," he said. "Air quality rules, building codes, that
type of strong regulation is needed. You can have strong regulation for
the future, then the financial market will start investing today, for
that future. Because that’s what markets do, they always look forward.”
By focusing on this quote Roberts mixes together regulation with the market methods of investment, carbon pricing, etc.
Carney again:
“With the right regulation, with a rising carbon
price, with a financial sector that is oriented this way, with public
accountability of government, of financial institutions, of companies,
yes, then we can, we certainly have the conditions in which to achieve
[holding global heating to 1.5C.]"
Then Roberts goes on to denounce regulation as simply allowing growing burning of fossil fuels:
“This is disingenuous nonsense. Carbon pricing
schemes just hide the reality that, as long as the fossil fuel industry
and the other big multinational emitters of greenhouse gases are
untouched and not brought into a plan for phasing them out, the tipping
point for irreversible global warming will be passed. Instead of
waiting for the market to speak, and for ‘regulation’, we need a global
plan where fossil fuel industries, financial institutions and major
emitting sectors are brought under public ownership and control."
No matter that regulation can be carried on directly against burning of fossil fuels. Regulation is bad because it is wedded to market methods. Now he even puts regulation in quotes. “Regulation” is bad because it is not really regulation, is his unconscious logic. And that is our point. Real regulation, not regulation wedded to market methods, can be good.
Against regulation, Roberts counter-poses government control. Certainly nationalization would bring a greater potential control over polluting industries. But counter-posing it to regulation will confuse the public and interfere with the possible rising course of mass movements. Very likely these mass movements, in the U.S. at least, will at first demand government regulation of polluting industries. To condemn this in the name of nationalization will create confusion and interfere with the developments of mass struggles, which may rise from demanding regulation, seeing its failure or insufficiency, to demanding nationalization (known in the U.S. as “government take-over” of an industry or company).
Roberts goes on to mention wonderful pipe-dreams of what industries
to nationalize. And such nationalizations may strike some blows to
global heating. But the climate crisis will not be effectively combated
by weak blows. It will require the maximum energy, the maximum
mobilization of the working class and masses. It will certainly require
fights for all kinds of regulations and government take-overs of
industry. And for nationalizations to strike strong blows, there must
be vigorous mass mobilization to oversee them and to demand that the
polluters are controlled and struck down to the maximum possible. It
will be a very bitter class struggle, if it gets underway before
extreme destruction can make it quite difficult. But counter-posing
fighting regulations to nationalizations will only hinder this
struggle. As will proposing nationalizations without specifying the
necessity of the strongest struggle from below to make them
effective. <>
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