“Market forces” will never prevent climate disaster

Review of The Price is Wrong: why capitalism won’t save the planet, by Brett Christophers (Verso: 2024, 398 pages)

Wind and solar power projects, that for so long needed state backing, can now provide electricity to wholesale markets so cheaply that they will compete fossil fuels out of the park. It’s the beginning of the end for coal and gas. Right? No, completely wrong.

The fallacy that “market forces” can achieve a transition away from fossil fuels is demolished in this highly readable polemic by Brett Christophers.

Solar panels at Dau Tieng Solar Power Complex in Tay Ninh, Vietnam. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran

Prices in wholesale electricity markets, on which economists and analysts focus, are not really the point, he argues: profits are. That’s what companies who invest in electricity generation care about, and these can more easily be made with coal and gas.

Christophers also unpicks claims that renewables projects are subsidy-free. Even with renewably-produced electricity increasingly holding its own competitively in wholesale markets, it’s state support that counts: look at China, which is building new renewables faster than the rest of the world put together.

The obsession with wholesale electricity prices, and costs of production – to the exclusion of other economic factors – emerged in the 1980s and 90s as part of the neoliberal zeitgeist, Christophers explains. The damage done by fossil fuels to the natural world, including climate change, was priced at zero; all that needed correcting, ran the dominant discourse, was to include the cost of this “externality” in prices (page 108).

Wheat as a weapon: European farmers’ protests and the Ukraine war

Polish farmers’ organisations yesterday ended a blockade of Ukrainian agricultural exports that has dragged on for months (see here and here). The farmers were promised subsidies from the Polish government and a system of checks to ensure the goods are transited through Poland to other destinations. But many of the tensions underlying the protests remain. This guest post by EVA GELINSKY (written in March, while the blockade was in place) explains the background.

Farmers across Europe have been protesting for months – and although the protests are dying down in many places, partly due to seasonal factors, further actions can be expected. In eastern Europe, protests and blockades are continuing, and these are primarily directed against agricultural imports from Ukraine.

Farmers protest in Warsaw in February. Photo: Cybularny / Creative commons

Demonstrations, strikes and blockades by farmers in Europe are not a new phenomenon. Since the beginning of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), i.e. for more than 60 years, there have always been fierce protests.

Despite several deep-going reforms, the fundamental aim of European Union (EU) agricultural policy is still to orientate agriculture and supply towards the standards of industrial capitalist production and the global agricultural market.

Because this structural change has a serious impact on farms and the environment, complicated new measures and regulations have been introduced time and again, for decades. These are intended to steer structural change in a regulated manner, cushion the hardships that arise and minimise the worst environmental damage.

Even if this policy of “grow or die” forces many farms to give up, and drives others into debt, the result is extremely successful: even after the UK’s withdrawal, the EU is (as of 2022) the second largest agricultural trading power in the world (after China and ahead of the USA).

Palestine, Ukraine and the crisis of empires

On the Easter weekend, on the latest gigantic march in London against UK complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza, a group of us took a banner that said “From Ukraine to Palestine, occupation is a crime”. We were welcomed by marchers around us, and people took up our slogan.

London, 30 March 2022, on the demonstration calling for a ceasefire in Gaza

But beyond a slogan, what can we, in the labour movement and social movements in the UK, do about these conflicts that are transforming the world we live in, and heightening fears of bigger, bloodier wars?

Download this article, and a linked one, as a PDF

I suggest some answers here, based on the idea that we are dealing with the decline of two empires, American and Russian.[1] Of course neither is an empire in the strict sense of the word. By American empire, I mean the US’s economic dominance in world capitalism, and the military and political system that supports it, in which Israel is a key element. Russia, by contrast, is an economically subordinate, second-rate power, trying to reassert its dominance in the Eurasian geographical space.

My focus is on Russia’s war on Ukraine, and how it is changing, in the context shaped by the war in Gaza. The sections of the article cover (1) things I think have changed in the last six months, (2) how Russia has changed since 2022, (3) the prospects for Ukraine, (4) the role of the western powers in Russia’s war, (5) “democracy” and “authoritarianism”, (6) the dangers of a wider war, and some conclusions.[2]

No path to peace in Ukraine through this fantasy world

The Russian army’s meagre successes in Ukraine – such as taking the ruined town of Avdiivka, at horrendous human cost – have produced a new round of western politicians’ statements and commentators’ articles about possible peace negotiations.

Hopes are not high, because the Kremlin shows no appetite for such talks. Its actions, such as nightly bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure, speak louder than political and diplomatic words on all sides.

The desire and hope for peace is widely shared, and I share it too. How can it be achieved?

Download this article, and a linked one, as a PDF

Among “left” writers, the “campists” and one-sided “anti-imperialists”, who deny Ukraine’s right to resist Russian aggression, say that peace talks could start now … if only the western powers did not stand in the way. (By “campism”, I mean the view that the world is divided simplistically between a western imperialist camp dominated by the US, and another camp comprising China, Russia and other countries, in which some progressive potential resides.)

Mariupol, after the siege. Photo: ADifferentMan / Creative Commons

The “campist” case is made by literally ignoring what is actually going on in Ukraine, and Russia, and focusing – often exclusively – on the political and diplomatic shenanigans in western countries.

In this blog post I will look at seven recent articles by “campist” writers. All of them call for peace talks; and all claim that the main obstacle is the western powers.  

I will cover (1) the selection of subject matter by these authors; (2) what little they actually say about peace negotiations; and (3) why the claim that the western powers sabotaged peace talks in April 2022 is less convincing than they believe it to be.

The seven articles are: “Europe sleepwalks through its own dilemmas” by Vijay Prashad (Counterpunch, Brave New Europe, Countercurrents and elsewhere); “Exit of Victoria Nuland creates opportunity for peace in Ukraine” by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies (Common Dreams, Morning Star, Consortium News and elsewhere); “Ukraine: Pope pipes up for peace” by Andrew Murray (Stop the War coalition); “Where are the righteous Ukraine partisans now?” by Branko Marcetic (Brave New Europe); “Diplomacy is the art of compromise: that’s what’s needed for peace in Ukraine” by Alexander Hill (Stop the War coalition); “US repeatedly blocked Ukraine peace deals; is it rethinking its strategy yet?” by John Wojcik and C.J. Atkins (People’s World); and “The Grinding War in Ukraine Could have ended a long time ago” by Branko Marcetic (Jacobin).

Russia turns Ukraine’s occupied areas into an armed camp

After ten years of war, and two years of all-out invasion

Russia is turning the parts of Ukraine it has occupied into a giant military buffer zone, from which further assaults may be launched, the Eastern Human Rights Group (EHRG) has warned.

The expansion of military combat, training and transport infrastructure, and the forced mobilisation of local men, was documented in a recent report by the group, which champions labour and civil rights in the occupied areas.

‘Mobilisation’ in occupied Donbass, 2023. Photo: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group / YouTube

While military institutions multiply, industry across the occupied territories stagnates. Russian passports are forced on young and old, imperial dogma on school pupils. A reign of terror continues against all forms of protest.

Here I try to outline the situation in the occupied areas, as the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine goes into its third year, with links to more sources. (See Note at the end for a reminder of the territories occupied.)

Militarisation

□ The establishment of four new military units in occupied parts of Luhansk, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhya regions.

Signs of the military build-up noted in the EHRG report, published last month, include:

□ The expansion of paramilitary higher education institutions, including the setting-up last year of a branch of the Nakhimov Naval School in Mariupol, the southern Ukrainian city where thousands of civilians were killed by Russian military action in 2022.

‘Capitalism is anti-us’: ex-GKN workers champion ecological transition

On 9 July 2021, Melrose Industries announced the closure of its GKN Driveline (formerly FIAT) factory at Campi di Bisenzio, near Florence in Italy, which produced axles for cars. More than 400 workers were laid off. While in many such cases the workers and unions settle for negotiating enhanced redundancy benefits, the GKN Factory Collective took over the plant and kickstarted a long struggle against its closure.

Cartoon from the factory collective’s facebook page

But what makes the ex-GKN Florence dispute really unique is the strategy adopted by the workers, who sealed an alliance with the climate justice movement by drafting a conversion plan for sustainable, public transport and demanding its adoption.

This strategy engendered a cycle of broad mobilisations – repeatedly bringing tens of thousands to the streets – so that the dispute still continues, and the permanent sit-in at the factory remains until today.

The workers were meant to be finally dismissed on 1 January 2024. The GKN  Factory Collective had thus turned New Year’s Eve into a final call to action to defend their conversion plan. Such pressure from below probably played a role in a decision by the labour court, announced on 27 December 2023, to overturn the layoffs for the second time.

The workers’ current plan is to set up a cooperative for the production of cargo bikes and solar panels, as part of a broader vision for a worker-led ecological transition. This needs material solidarity, now. A popular shareholding campaign has been started, to launch this co-operative: so far more than 600,000 euros have been collected, towards a target of one million euros.

All information on how to contribute, individually or as an organisation, can be found at the website Insorgiamo.org.

Defining ecosocialism

By Simon Pirani. This article is based on a talk I gave at the Ecosocialism conference in London on Saturday (2 December).

Making ecosocialism a reality is obviously a huge, many-sided collective task and here I just highlight three aspects of it. First, the ways in which the war in Gaza, that has taken up so much of all our attention in recent weeks, is relevant to it. Second, about capitalism’s impact on the environment, specifically with respect to global warming. And third some points about how we might develop ecosocialist ideas.

1. War and climate change

The connections between war and climate change are complex and go to the heart of the way the society we live in works. Thinking about these is a collective task we need to work on over time. Here are some points for discussion.

A year on, that’s still right. London demonstration, November 2022. Photo by Steve Eason

It has been suggested that a key cause of the war in Gaza is for control over fossil fuel resources. I do not agree with this: I think it’s a related, but secondary, issue. Gaza was occupied by Israel in 1967, more than 30 years before gas was discovered in the East Mediterranean. Even in 2007, when Hamas took over in Gaza and the territory was blockaded by Israel, no exploration work had been done on the major gas fields. Although one undeveloped field is in Gazan territorial waters, the larger, producing fields are in Egyptian and Israeli waters.

The war is much more about land and water, than about gas or oil. It is driven by political factors: the Israeli government’s determination to pursue ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population, and the western powers’ determination to use Israel as a strategic bulwark in the Middle East.

Contraction and convergence, development and urbanisation

Part 6 of Decarbonising the Built Environment: a Global Overview, by Tom Ackers

Download the whole series as a PDF here

From the perspectives of real human needs and capacities, and present forms of technology, it is perfectly possible for all the world’s peoples and societies to follow a low energy and low emissions economic path from now onwards.

The obstacles to that come from the forces of capitalist growth, and the powerful interests invested in a more destructive future.

The Kibera shanty town in Nairobi, Kenya. Source: Wikimedia / Creative Commons

The obvious rational route to decarbonisation and a more liveable environment is “contraction and convergence”, a concept pioneered by the Global Commons Institute.

It means that the world’s high consumers of materials and energy need to contract their material and energy footprints dramatically; in turn, that creates consumption space for the world’s poor to consume more per capita use-values than they do now – to converge upwards on the per capita living standards of the global north.

All of that needs to happen across all sectors of the economy. It also needs to happen within a shrinking material consumption budget globally – and in the context of steep rises in forecast population.

There is plainly a tension between the extent of “permissible” material consumption, and the enormous needs for social development internationally. At least half the world’s population lives in material poverty.

Quantifying Material Use, Emissions, and the Scale of Decarbonisation

Part 5 of Decarbonising the Built Environment: a Global Overview, by Tom Ackers

Download the whole series as a PDF here

Globally, the built environment’s greenhouse gas emissions comprise those from construction, and those from the operational use of buildings (for electricity, heating and cooling, cooking, etc).

By weight, building and infrastructure construction creates by far the largest “stock” of materials, globally.

The Heidelberg cement factory, Germany. Source: Heritage calling / Creative Commons

In this part, I look at the historical growth in material stocks (section 5.1); the maintenance and replacement of these stocks (section 5.2); how these stocks have accumulated in different countries (section 5.3); and then the impact of land use on emissions (section 5.4). After that I then turn to the present state of man-made emissions in the built environment (section 5.5). Finally, I outline what I see as the big issues raised by decarbonisation (section 5.6).

5.1. A history of material stocks

Much of the greenhouse gases emitted in the history of the fossil economy is embedded in material stocks of metals, building materials and waste. To quantify the emissions, we need to quantify the scale of these material stocks and the flows that produced them. To do so I will draw on work by a team of researchers mostly based at the Vienna Institute of Social Ecology.

A series of studies shows that, globally, about 1000 billion tonnes (1000 Gt) of physical materials are embedded in buildings and infrastructure. One such study, published in Nature in 2020, was reported with the headline: “Human-made materials now outweigh Earth’s entire biomass”.[1]

Palestine and Ukraine: how the 21st century empires wage war

By SIMON PIRANI. Based on a talk at the Punjab Research Group (UK) conference on “Changing Global Order: Nations and States”, on 28 October

Here I will, first, comment on the wars in Palestine and Ukraine, and what I think they tell us about 21st century empires. Second, I will offer a view about the causes of these and other wars, and the causes of climate change, all of which can be understood as manifestations of the crisis of capital. Third, I will talk about the relationship of war and social struggles in Russia and Ukraine.

A huge poster for the 2019 Israeli election, at the ruling Likud party’s offices, showed Binyamin Netanyahu shaking hands with Vladimir Putin. It reads “Another League”. Photo by Ilia Yefimovich/dpa/picture alliance

–

1. Palestine and Ukraine

The initial impetus for the new war in Gaza was the brutal Hamas incursion into Israel that resulted in a shocking number of civilian casualties. But the context is a long history of Israeli settler colonialism: the illegal occupation of Gaza from 1967; the blockade of Gaza since Hamas took control in the elections of 2007; the very high numbers of civilian casualties resulting from this blockade and subsequent Israeli military assaults.

None of this justifies Hamas’s attacks on civilians, but it forms the background to the Israeli military operation, which amounts to collective punishment of the civilian population. The deliberate severing of water and electricity supplies, the order to evacuate northern Gaza, and the heavy bombing of civilian targets are all war crimes.

This murderous onslaught on civilians, justified by nationalist rhetoric, is something that Israel’s war on the Palestinians and Russia’s war on Ukraine have in common. This is what empires do in the 21st century: the western empire that supports Israel, and the weaker Russian empire that the Kremlin is trying to revive.

As the Ukrainian researcher Daria Saburova wrote:

The evil that has killed both Israeli and Palestinian civilians in recent days is rooted in the continued occupation and colonisation by Israel of the Palestinian territories. In this sense, the oppression of the Ukrainian and Palestinian peoples has similarities: it is about the occupation of our lands by states with nuclear weapons and overwhelming military force, which mock the resolutions of the UN and international law, putting their causes above any diplomatic dialogue.

Here in the UK, what jumps out at us is the mind-bending cynicism and hypocrisy of the British political class, many of whom condemn Russian war crimes, but specifically refuse to condemn Israeli war crimes that are horrifically similar.

Over the last three weeks we have also seen a new wave of public frenzy – in the media, in the government and the big political parties – against the Palestinian struggle and anyone who supports it.