FRUITS, NOT ROOTS
In her book ‘This Changes Everything’, “Klein exposes the myths that are
clouding the climate debate”. She depicts the reality of the illusion that the free-market is our
saviour, when really it proves to be increasingly damaging to the ecosystem. There are three things that we must to do recover the ecological state
of our world, “it’s about capitalism”, it’s about “reining in
corporate power, rebuilding local economies, and reclaiming our democracies”.
Many large environmental organisations called
‘Big Green groups’ have close ties to large polluting businesses, and they
advocate for “market-based” solutions to climate issues which do not aim for a
full transition away from fossil fuels, some even have fossil fuel companies as
donors and invest their money is fossil fuel companies. They embrace neo-liberal
climate policies, like the ETS (Emissions Trading System) and fracking for gas.
This has been at a great cost to the environmental movement as Big Green groups
are supposed to practise and preach renewable lifestyles with less consumerism
and carbon taxes.
Green Groups with these affiliations are more
likely to push weak neo-liberal climate solutions such as ETS and natural
gas. If they do not, the sometimes risk losing funding. Thus, rather than using their initial drive to support sustainable climate solutions, they provide ‘cover’ for fossil fuel company’s climate policy preferences.
The Green Groups that do not have these links (eg. Greenpeace) are the ones
that more actively protest and challenge fossil fuel companies and neo-liberal
policies.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Green Groups collaborated
with politicians of the day, who were not neoliberal. When environmental
catastrophes were brought to their attention, like toxic pesticides or polluted
water, politicians were more willing to ‘interfere’ with the market and simply
outlaw bad practices, rather than ‘develop complex financial mechanisms to help
the market fix these bad practices for us’. Many Green Groups worked internally
with politicians and their green policies rather than outside as protesters. This
was until Reagan came into power and disregarded the importance of having Green
Groups work from the inside to help restore environmental stability, politicians
became staunchly neo-liberal and unwilling to let environmental concerns
inconvenience businesses in the ‘free market’.
Some
Green Groups like Greenpeace stayed adamant in their principles and challenged
Reagan. Many others, however, transformed themselves for the neoliberal age.
They decided to try and work with businesses and posit business-friendly
solutions. The 1980s and 1990s was the crucial era that shaped our climate
debates so it was a dire time in modern history for Green Groups to appear weak
and endorse neo-liberalism.
For example, many Green Groups encouraged
consumerist options like shopping green. Less watered down Green Groups, on the
other hand, challenged consumerism. Consumerism needs to be challenged in
itself, but further, claiming climate change is ‘the fight of our lives’ but
then saying the solution is ‘change your light bulbs’ makes people doubt the
severity of the problem. Many Green Groups backed fracking for gas
until solar/wind technology improves. But, solar/wind technology has improved
much quicker than predicted so this argument is not tangible anymore. Fracking
has also proved to be hazardous for humans as well as nature, and supporting fracking
has led to people moving money out of solar/wind technology – since you can’t
back both. Many Green Groups however, still back fracking, but are trying to
find ways to make it safe.
During early Kyoto Protocol talks in the
1990s, the US insisted they would not sign unless an ETS (a neoliberal
market-based solution where companies can ‘trade’ in a set amount of carbon
credits) was set up. Even after other countries signed it, the US still refused
to join). The ETS is deeply flawed because there are many ways for businesses
to get around it. For example, ‘carbon cowboys’ buy forests from PNG, Congo and
Peru and then they claim preserving this forest offsets their carbon credits.
Sometimes, however, this is disadvantageous to Indigenous people and farmers
who lose access to this land. Many Green Groups defend this practice, though it
comes with the sacrifice of poor people being evacuated off and deprived of
their land in the process.
There are a number of more direct, effective
ways of reducing the level of CO2 emissions than Europe’s ETS. Green Groups
thought that it was in their favour to partner up with Big Business but were unfortunately
outmanoeuvred and used as a cover by Big Business to weaken environmental
action. Green Groups and the rest of society must seek new and improved initiatives
to becoming greener, independent of the emissions trading system which has
proved to be a threat to environmental justices.
Klein, N. (2014) This changes everything: Capitalism vs. The climate. London,
England: Penguin Books.
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