Green Capitalism
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Decided to create a new thread mainly because of the credentials of the critic, a Blackrock investment banker.
He was part of the effort to turn Wall Street “green”. His informed judgement: “This is definitely not going to work.”
“I have looked inside the machine and I can tell you business does not have this,” Tariq explains. “Not because these are bad people but because they run for-profit machines that will operate exactly as you would expect them to do.”
The climate crisis can never be solved by today’s free markets.
“It’s not because they are evil, it’s because the system is built to extract profits,” he said.
Sadly, he is no socialist and trusts in government intervention by carbon taxing.
Another reminder of reality
India’s energy minister declared long-term net zero targets, “pie in the sky.” He said poor nations want to continue using fossil fuels and the rich countries “can’t stop it”. Net zero refers to balancing out any greenhouse gas emissions produced by industry, transport or other sources by removing an equivalent amount from the atmosphere.
“2060 sounds good, but it is just that, it sounds good,” Raj Kumar Singh, India’s minister for power, told a meeting organised by the International Energy Agency (IEA). “I would call it, and I’m sorry to say this, but it is just a pie in the sky.”
“…you have 800 million people who don’t have access to electricity. You can’t say that they have to go to net zero, they have the right to develop, they want to build skyscrapers and have a higher standard of living, you can’t stop it,” he told the meeting.
Further evidence that national interest comes before the interests of the planet
https://www.dw.com/en/can-the-eus-climate-change-plan-work-in-southeast-asia/a-57062423
In Southeast Asia coal usage has increased in the past decade. In 2019, the region consumed around 332 million tons of coal, nearly double the consumption from a decade earlier, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA)… coal-fired energy will overtake natural gas as the main power source in the ASEAN region by 2030. And by 2040 it could account for almost 50% of the region’s projected CO2 emissions.
Of that, Indonesia accounted for 42% and Vietnam nearly a third. In 2019, the region’s imports of thermal coal rose by 19% compared with the previous year, according to an IEA report.
Energy generated from coal doubled in the Philippines between 2011 and 2018, when it accounted for 53% of energy consumption, according to the country’s Department of Energy.
Coal is expected to account for more than 50% of Vietnam’s energy supply by 2030, the World Coal Association, an industry body, predicts.
Even Laos, which has built hundreds of hydropower dams over the past decade, saw coal-fired energy production rise from almost nothing to 10,000 GWh in 2017. In February, Laos’ deputy minister of energy and mines, Daovong Phoneke, announced that two new coal-fired energy plants
Indonesia last year initiated proceedings at the World Trade Organization against the EU’s phased ban on palm-oil imports. Brussels contends the ban is to protect the environment, but Indonesia, the world’s largest palm oil producer, says it is mere protectionism. Malaysia, the world’s second-largest palm oil producer, has vowed to stand with Jakarta in its battle against the EU.
All of which makes little old UK’s targets to be carbon neutral somewhat pointless, even if achievable.
Added to which the mentality of most eco types seems to be that we can all only do our bit by recycling, avoiding products with dodgy ingredients, and setting up yet another conservation group, leaving the bigger problems to the big boys.
In this video Greta Thunberg seconds Tariq’s analysis about the powerlessness of CEOs at about 5 mins in
But totally fails when asked about capitalism being culpable at 6 mins. Why can’t she recognise the cause of why politicians and CEOs won’t act? Is she scared of being labelled political?
She doesn’t understand a change in society which she later discusses later at 9 mins.
At 13 mins she expresses her skepticism about C0P-26
Australia’s leading scientists in a report by the Australian Academy of Science stated that the Paris climate agreement limiting global heating to 1.5C was now “virtually impossible”.
“The world is just nowhere near doing what is required for 1.5C,” Peters says. “Saying anything other than 1.5C is virtually impossible is irresponsible and misleading.”
“fossil-fuel free” buildings
“It’s strange to see something described as ‘fossil-fuel free’ when it is made of concrete, steel and glass,” says Joe Giddings, coordinator of the Architects Climate Action Network (Acan) campaign group. “The production of these materials entails burning a huge amount of fossil fuel. The climate emergency is not a game and we can’t just spin our way through it. We need to think about where our materials come from, how they’re made and interrogate the whole supply chain – from construction to demolition and reuse.”
Capitalism is not turning green, the capitalists are looking for new energy sources and the competition for the electric car is going to get tough among themselves. Probably, the final days of the petroleum industry are getting close. There are many by-products that can be obtained from Cannabis similar to the by-products obtained from the sugar cane
There is a connection here between small capitalism and farming with alleviating some consequences of climate change.
No solution of course, but some mitigation of local issues.‘Bright Green Lies’
Much like ‘Planet of the Humans’, it questions the green answers being proposed by capitalism
I was reading that a member of the USA house of Representatives said that the Green Deal is a Communist manifesto. In the USA 99.9% of the peoples do not have a clue of what socialism/communism really is
Green Investment Bank 2.0”
A new state-backed green bank to help finance Britain’s climate ambitions is to be established, three years after the sell-off the earlier UK’s Green Investment Bank.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/15/uk-government-planning-new-green-investment-bank
British businesses have the opportunity to create 240,000 low-carbon jobs and boost green exports by billions of pounds over the next decade, the CBI has said. UK firms could boost low-carbon exports to the EU, including opportunities to grow electric vehicle and battery sales by £18bn over the next decade.
“Decarbonising our economy is a planetary imperative, we can use our transition to net zero to create green jobs, to find sustainable solutions and sell them to the rest of the world.”
Meanwhile
the UK experienced its longest spell of low wind output in more than a decade during the first three months of this year. The authors said output from the country’s 24.4GW fleet of wind turbines fell to as low as 0.6GW on 3 March – in contrast with the 18.1GW delivered later that month. Between 26 February and 8 March – a total of 11 days – the capacity of the national wind turbine fleet did not go above 20%.
Grid operators had to call on gas-fired units to generate power to plug the gap, with every gigawatt of falling wind output being replaced by 0.84GW of gas, thereby harming Britain’s carbon-cutting ambitions
A record was set in the early hours of Friday 21 May for the share of wind power in the generation mix, with wind providing nearly two-thirds of Britain’s electricity
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/24/businesses-unlock-uk-growth-green-exports-cbi
“We also need the bankers and executives. Why? Because we have only 10 years to cut emissions by half. We cannot change the economic model in 10 years… If you can get private banks, central banks and financial institutions on side, you can cut the flow of fossil fuel investment very fast.”
Johan Rockström, one of the world’s most influential Earth scientists as director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Still committed to reforming capitalism to fix the climate.
But now just nine years to do so.
“Some corporations, instead of combating the causes of planetary destruction, focus on green capitalism, converting natural resources into commodities and new areas for market speculation, like carbon credits, environmental preservation credits, and other false solutions that will not resolve the social and ecological needs of the people,”- La Via Campesina
The solution is in the rebuilding of the relationship between human beings and nature, where life, collective well-being, and ecological rhythms – not greed and profit – guide the actions of nations and peoples. It is a solution focused on agroecological production of food; the democratization of the access to land through agrarian reform; the protection and care of common goods such as water, biodiversity and land; and the transition to an energy model that responds to the real needs of the working class with social and environmental justice, overcoming patriarchy and racism.
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