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The Forum > Article Comments > The great screw up and the case for intellectual self defence > Comments

The great screw up and the case for intellectual self defence : Comments

By Richard Hil and Lester Thompson, published 14/10/2008

'Casino capitalism', 'robber barren capitalism', 'the greed machine' - call it what you will - the corporate financial orgy has come to a shuddering halt.

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TOYB - thanks for your calm reply which, given the critical importance of the issues we both raise, could have easily become a savage grappling match. I'll try briefly to grapple instead with some of these issues just to express my own perspective here.

The celebrities I mentioned have each demonstrated a faithful green mysticism, while conveying quite draconian messages about a "green" economy and world order which I believe we can identify only as that regressive and brutal system called "feudalism". On moral grounds I oppose such people's influence instinctively and vehemently.

The supervising and proselytizing for the doctrines of anthropogenic global warming have been conducted largely by apparatchiks from precisely the same circles of monetarist debt trickery that brought us into this calamitous global crash. Both Nick Stern and Ross Garnaut are World Bank men; Al Gore is a hedge fund manager whose avowed humanitarian vision did nothing to stop him voting down generic AIDS medicine for Africa. Various schemes for emissions trading promise a faith-driven "bubble dynamic" identical in function to the irrational zeal for derivatives, for example. Therefore, I see such oligarchs' efforts as yet more regressive, oppressive and misanthropist.

In light of serious and detailed scientific contradictions of AGW claims asserted - and more importantly, lavishly sponsored - by such banking figures, I cannot explain their sectoral interests in AGW as mere functional coincidence, or some demonstration of belated eco-conscience from the predominant elements within the western capitalist establishment.

A further factor that I consider in this sense is geo-strategic. China, India, Indonesia, and Latin America all promise to finally develop to stages of civilization that promise to overtake the long-dominant forces in the west. Western demographic trends have helped to hasten this shift to such re-ordering of global power. Promotion of AGW and associated fiscal control mechanisms offer the networks of western-based imperialism their last chance at continued dominance or, at least, survival by parity.
Posted by mil-observer, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 4:44:37 PM
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Thank you Mil Observer for your equally calm reply. These forums are much more enjoyable and productive where participants engage from a position of civility and respect rather than savage grappling.

Again, your points are well-made. I’m completely comfortable with the description of the current global system as imperialist; one of the best analyses I’ve come across is David Harvey’s classification of it as ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780199264315). I lived in Guatemala for seven years and I know what severe poverty looks like. I have no doubt that a certain fraction of capital sees huge profit opportunities in the renewable energy sector, just as another fraction wants to keep polluting for as long as possible. Equally I am sure your suspicions regarding the geo-political motives of the faltering imperialist bloc have a sound basis in fact.

Be all that as it may, it does not necessarily mean that AGW as a phenomenon is a hoax. Not all climate scientists are World Bank stooges. My interest is more in the possibilities it and other related crises – resource depletion foremost among them - present for transformative political and economic change, combined with questions of political strategy.

Most Australians accept AGW as an established fact. So even if you are right – and you may be – you are going to have a very hard time pushing this aspect of your case. Personally I think it’s better to work with the flow of what Gramsci called ‘the common sense’, and try to direct it towards progressive and transformative ends. So yes, segments of dominant capitalist interests see AGW as potentially founding a new accumulation regime; on the other hand, there is a growing movement in agroecology and ecological and feminist economics that sees in it the opportunity for quite a radical restructuring of social and economic relations. Have a look for example at the ‘Green New Deal’ proposed by the New Economics Foundation in the UK (http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/), and the Zero Carbon Britain report (http://www.zerocarbonbritain.com/). These are important attempts to combine social justice with environmentalism, and are a step in the right direction.
Posted by Take off your blinkers, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 11:31:06 AM
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Take off your blinkers,

Thanks for the link to David Harvey. It's 25 years ago that I read some of his work for the first time and was very impressed; but he has since fallen off my radar screen. Now I'll have another look at him. He helped shape my thinking about problems in urban areas going well past the old Chicago school.
Posted by Spikey, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 1:23:08 PM
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Mil Observer,

Personally I’m not entirely convinced by AGW, although climate change itself seems to be occurring.

I have to take issue with you ad hominem attacks on Stern, Gore and Garnaut. That type of fallacy is endemic in the conspiracy minded far left, which has many similarities with marcarthyite anti communism, where a person was judged based upon their associations and not upon their actions. I struggle to see how you can hold out yourself out as an expert upon either of those two men’s personal motivations, So lets just stick with critiquing their actions, rather than lumping them all in with the CONSPIRACISTS/IMPERIALISTS.

The reason we have economists writing reports on carbon reduction initiatives, like a carbon tax, is that the impact of such a program will be felt all the way through the economy and has the potential, if not implemented carefully, to significantly damage our economy. I wonder who you think should be writing reports on implementing carbon reduction plans? Greenies?

Garnaut was brought in to do a job. The gov’t had already promised to do something about climate change, as they had already accepted AGW. Garnaut merely outlined some practical options and their effects on our economy, and on CO2 output.

Your contention that AGW is an imperialist attempt to maintain dominance is interesting. I wonder how exactly it is you believe we can force China, India etc to accept the inherent limitations on their industrial growth that will accompany any significant carbon reduction target. If that is what you are getting at.

You talk about an “irrational zeal for derivatives”. That sounds like propaganda speak. Which derivatives are you talking about, or are you saying that all derivatives are bad?

TOYB understands that the vast majority of big business will suffer, some significantly, if they are forced to reduce their emissions. How will these imperialists be sidelined by the imperialists who will make money from the CO2 reduction plans? Doesn’t the fact that there are clearly competing interests here make a nonsense of the idea that AGW is a imperialist conspiracy?
Posted by Paul.L, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 2:01:02 PM
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TOYB

First, the David Harvey reference makes simplistic identification of “the new imperialism” with “the US”: the link's precis makes it clear that “the US” is the “empire” in question. Yet if we check America's situation over the last decade, it is obvious that most people in “the US” have been increasingly disenfranchised, ignored and abused – by contrast, the actual “empire” has been going great guns. I think the key context here is “globalization”, which implies every danger to national sovereignty, genuine government, and good governance, including for the US (perhaps especially so). I believe the hindsight we have now confirms that the neocon “Project for a New American Century” was a nasty con (pardon the pun). The goals and strategies of PNAC have been a disaster for US domestic harmony and US global projection. Whatever the vast overseas mayhem caused, and however many naïve Americans swallowed PNAC while enticed by its bullying swagger – at least early on - PNAC's domestic effect on the US only proves further the Bush—Cheney administration's cynicism and dishonesty. The US has been weakened profoundly, thereby itself subordinated more to the imperialist designs of globalizing, free-trade monetarist networks. Therefore, any such US-based imperialism should be understood properly as “fake patriotic” and actually “unAmerican” in a more logical, non-jingoistic sense. Enron, Halliburton, Abu Ghraib and Hurricane Katrina all symbolize just how truly “unAmerican” Bush—Cheney America has been: exported psychopathy, and imported corruption, impoverishment and disintegration.

Indeed "not all climate scientists are World Bank stooges" as you remind us, but WB hegemony is clear in the case of AGW dogma and publicity. I use the Gramscian term deliberately because I believe Gramsci would rather identify “hegemony” within AGW activism, not “the common sense” that you infer. I understand that Gramscian “common sense” describes essentially conservative and neophobe tendencies, which would be at odds with dogmatic “New Age” activism in AGW, whether purporting “leftist” or “ecologically responsible liberalist” agendas. Nonetheless, Gramscian “common sense” would not imply censorious and authoritarian treatment either when responding to specialized, collective dissent: such oppressive responses would rather characterize the
Posted by mil-observer, Thursday, 23 October 2008 9:22:10 AM
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authoritarian intolerance of hegemonic power. My concern here is best demonstrated in the "open letter" by some 100 leading scientists to Ban Ki Moon during the Bali Climate Conference (see: http://www.nationalpost.com/most_popular/story.html?id=164002 and http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=164004). It is extraordinary that such expert dissent goes largely ignored; it should compel serious reappraisal and publicity, as we should expect to happen in any academic - and especially scientific – field not so politicized. I cited that case elsewhere on OLO, and the pro-AGW response there was only a flippant, unsubstantiated shot at discrediting the dissident academics, with assumptions about “big business corruption”!

Following your argument's anomalous reliance upon some Gramscian doctrine, my most serious concern arises where you express easy accommodation of irrationality, uncritical thought, and susceptibility, even submission and unwitting aid to, successful hegemonic propaganda (“Most Australians accept AGW as an established fact”). Polling may well have indicated Australians' general fear about polar bears drowning to extinction and suburbs permanently flooded by rising tides, but does this not reflect the intensive exposure to such stories in the mass media via accredited “environmental reporters”, dubiously funded NGOs and – again – the more overtly oligarchical interests of international finance via the IPCC et al? Furthermore, polling of Australians has opened up other pits of fear, like intensely hostile and paranoid attitudes about Middle Eastern, African, and Indonesian travellers into or near Australian territorial waters, and about non-European migrants generally.

More fundamentally, your concession that I may be right reveals your argument's disturbing absence of sound ethical principle, implying also some (misguided) opportunism. There seems a sense of futility if not servility in claiming to “work with the flow of” a prematurely labelled Gramscian “common sense” in AGW, where dominant interests have sponsored AGW so energetically. In addition to the World Bank and ETS entrepeneurs, AGW activism also falls within the routine commercial modus operandi of privatized utility companies, for example. Electricity, water and other firms have used AGW repeatedly to justify various price hikes onto consumers – from “green/paperless” billing to advertising and incrementally punitive charges.
Posted by mil-observer, Thursday, 23 October 2008 9:23:29 AM
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