CAPITALISM MUST DIE

A team of scientists appointed by the United Nations has reported that capitalism cannot provide the economic transition required to defeat climate change. Although their paper was released four days ago, it has so far been ignored by the New Zealand Green Party.

THERE ARE a lot things to not like about the Green Party but its inadequate approach to climate change is top of the list. When humanity and the planet are faced with a existential danger that threatens our very survival, getting 'carbon neutral' by 2030 just won't cut it. And Julie Anne Genter biking to work while proselytising on the advantages of public transport might provoke some social media traffic but it will do nothing to avert the climate-change induced disaster that awaits and which we are seeing signs of now. And when co-leader James Shaw stands up to talk about how New Zealand business can turn climate change to its financial advantage we are indeed faced with the lunacy of 'green capitalism'.

It's not that the Green's are not aware of the increasingly sombre and dire warnings that have been issued by a slate of scientists and writers in recent years. The problem is that none of these warnings inform the policies of the Green Party. When they have been told time and time again that the problem is capitalism, we have Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson standing up in Parliament to praise Grant Robertson's neoliberal budget as 'a good start'.

The parliamentary Green Party, apparently with little disagreement from its membership, has adopted policies that avoid clashing with the interests and priorities of the economic and political elite. Writer and activist Naomi Klein talks about this conservative environmentalism in her book This Changes Everything:

Naomi Klein

"We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe — and would benefit the vast majority — are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets. That problem might not have been insurmountable had it presented itself at another point in our history. But it is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when those elites were enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s. Indeed, governments and scientists began talking seriously about radical cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in 1988 — the exact year that marked the dawning of what came to be called “globalisation.”

Given its continued loyalty to the fantasy of a  environmentally friendly capitalism, it is unlikely that the Green Party or any of its MP's will be publicising a new United Nations sponsored report that suggests that our present economic system must be overcome if we are to avert a environmental disaster far greater than what we have already experienced in many parts of the world.

The paper was written by biophysicists who were asked to contribute research to the UN Global Sustainable Development Report which will be released in 2019. The paper  says that such is the severity of the threat we are now facing, tinkering with the present economic system is simply inadequate. The scientists call for societies to start thinking about new models of governance and economics because “We face a form of capitalism that has hardened its focus to short-term profit maximization with little or no apparent interest in social good.”

While the paper stops short of advocating a socialist response it does say that we must  “transform the ways in which energy, transport, food, and housing are produced and consumed” with the goal of attaining “production and consumption that provides decent opportunities for a good life while dramatically reducing the burden on natural ecosystems.”

The underlying intent of the paper is that capitalism is incapable of delivering this goal. The scientists baldly state: "“Market-based action will not suffice—even with a high carbon price. There must be a comprehensive vision and closely coordinated plans. Otherwise, a rapid system-level transformation toward global sustainability goals is inconceivable.”

Although the paper was released four days ago not one of the eight Green MP's has felt it worthy of mentioning - assuming any of them have actually read it.