The Paris Agreement is a system of smoke and mirrors designed to convince the TV watching public that those in power have finally decided to solve the climate crisis. The main obstacle preventing effective climate action, namely the capitalist world system, has never been questioned in Paris. (One cannot expect the leaders of this system to question their system.) The true purpose of the agreement is to protect capitalism from climate blow-back, i.e., to enable those presently in power to continue to mis-manage the world's resources and technologies, and to convince the pesky masses that they can go back to sleep.
Therefore now it is especially important to maintain and increase the momentum of the climate movement. I personally am not sure if the movement will have gained enough strength before so much CO2 has been pumped into the atmosphere that it will be impossible to maintain civilized life past this century, but it is certainly worth trying. I am pessimistic for one main reason: Humanity is facing two deadlines, one in 5 years, and one in 35 years (this is my rough guess based on some of the scientific literature I am following). In 35 years the climate will have changed so much that everybody on earth realizes the gravity of the situation and will call for radical changes --- because continuing as usual has physically become impossible. But in 35 years it will be too late. The radical measures which people will consider reasonable when they see their house on fire must be already taken now, in the next 5 years, during a time when things still look peaceful and where it does not seem reasonable to change behavior, laws and international relations as radically as is necessary to wean the world economy of fossil fuels and switch from growth to sustainability. I definitely think it is worth trying for another reason: People realize that their own innocent daily habits and behavior is wrecking the climate. And they are taught, by us economists, that this practical activity is shaped by their utility functions. They do not understand that their resource-destructive lifestyles are not their own creation but are generated by the need of the capitalist system to reproduce itself. The fact that social relations are mistaken as part of our human nature has been called "commodity fetishism". I am optimistic because I think people are able to overcome the mis-conception that it is necessary to fight against their own human nature, a fight which they know is doomed from the beginning, therefore they do not see a way out. But there is a way out. The masses have to fight against the social constraints imposed on them by the capitalist system, which is only a few centuries old and which can be replaced by a different social order. I do not mean to say that we first have to make world revolution before we can address climate change, species extinctions, the destruction of our oceans etc. The first step must be that popular pressure everywhere leads to a highly regulated capitalism, and that competition between nations has to be replaced by cooperation. Embryos of this are indeed in the Paris Agreement. I agree with many others that the promises of the Paris Agreement, which were carefully designed so that they can remain empty, should be taken as a framework for a world wide mass movement in which governments everywhere will be forced by their populations to keep these promises and to strengthen them. I am sure that many individuals in these governments will be delighted to be forced by the masses to do the things which they know must be done but which their official position does not allow them to do on their own. Therefore I see some possibilities, there is light at the end of the tunnel. But if we wait until we reach the end of the tunnel it will be too late. We have to replace the darkness of our capitalist tunnel by light right now, while we are still deep inside the tunnel, because the first deadline I talked about is not at the end of the tunnel but in the middle of the tunnel. This is the real challenge. Hans G Ehrbar Econ Professor Emeritus University of Utah _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
