The problem with socialism is that it's vaporware. There is no draft socialist Constitution of the United States, no draft precis of socialist coroporate law. It's been 150 years since Das Kapital, and these things STILL don't exist. Which is beyond pathetic.
And when socialists seize power anyway and wing it (because there is no actual socialist plan, and never has been), disaster inevitably ensues.
Climate change is a big problem, but yapping about socialism ain't gonna do one damn thing to help.
For a libertarian-inclined person like me, things like this are highly amusing. It reminds me greatly of the revolutionary literary debates among the various Russian radical groups in the 1910s. The same self-confidence the writers are on the right side of history. The same simmering discontent that the masses aren't yet ready for revolution. The same confidence that the right action plan can turn things around from the top.
Mr. Pearl comes perilously close to identifying the real problem the ecosocialists are facing: People don't support them. Jason Hickel thinks we can end greenhouse gas emissions by nationalizing the oil companies. Mike Pearl thinks this won't succeed because it sounds radical to most people. He's right, of course, but assume, for discussion, that President Biden (or maybe President Harris) somehow gets Congress to go along with the idea, and we nationalize the oil companies. Then what? Does he really think that voters will buy into the idea that oil companies should stop producing oil so that consumers can't use oil? If voters really thought that, they'd also support legislation to ban production and use of oil. They'd even stop using oil themselves.
But voters and consumers in industrialized societies don't support such action, even if they do support "drastic action for climate change" in the abstract. Because they have the sense that modern life wouldn't be possible without oil (and natural gas, and most of the other things the eco-utopians want people to do without). But if it's hard to convince Americans and Europeans to give up a modern lifestyle, it will be much harder to convince Chinese, Indians, and Vietnamese to give up their chance at a modern lifestyle - they know what real poverty is, and they know there's a way out of it, and they're determined to try.
The good news is that there's no ecocatastrophe looming. There's not a single scientific paper, let alone a consensus among scientists, that 1.5C, or 2C, or 4C will lead to catastrophe. The last full IPCC assessment predicted rather modest challenges from 2C of warming; the 1.5C assessment was all the same challenges, but a bit more modest.
I personally think the projections of warming are overstated, because all the models used for the projections assume (without evidence) that there are large positive feedbacks - that 1C of warming from carbon will lead to effects (reduced albedo, or increased water vapor, or melting of permafrost, or something else that might be plausible) that cause a further 1C, or 2C, or 5C, or more. I highly recommend the excellent Climate Skeptic blog for a rundown of the science behind this argument, but even if you reject this view, go back to the IPCC. There's no catastrophe coming.
I get the idea that centralized state power tends toward dystopia (I just finished Vasily Grossman's "Stalingrad" and "Life and Fate"), but risking that may be necessary. We have governments nationalize fossil fuel industries and manage the transition and hope we learned enough from the histories of the Nazis and the Soviets to build in safeguards against the inhumanity that could certainly arise. (and who knows? maybe we can get it right if it's purposefully designed)
The alternative seems like it's leading to dystopia anyway and may well lead to totalitarian governments itself.
At least by acting purposefully, we'd have a better chance?
I've been puzzling over the relationship between degrowth and ecosocialism for a while. The first, when you go beyond caricatures of the idea, implies the second, in my view. Reduce wasteful private consumption and build luxurious shared facilities that satisfy needs and wants in a less damaging way. I don't think it is a "do this then we can do that", I think it is a "solving this problem takes us towards that".
But I don't envy anyone trying to make that argument in the context of the US with (what looks from outside) its deeply degraded public sphere (physically and politically).
For the oil companies, taking them out of private hands would be followed by shutting them down. There's an interesting question whether nationalisation (state control) or workers' control would be better for this. A worker's-run oil company would still cook the climate, but a wholly state-controlled one would not help the workers transition to climate-friendly jobs. (And that's without even mentioning Equinor or whatever the Saudi oil company is called).
That's the conversations we should be having, but decades of disinformation has polluted more than just the atmosphere.
Dude, I don’t know what kind of HVAC repair guys and doctors office receptionists you encounter, but from my vantage point they’re not whispering about Robinhood and Coinbase either, whatever those even are (I’m probably a lot more plugged in that your average lower middle class American, and I’m only vaguely aware of those things, in that I’ve heard of them).
To me, the biggest obstacle to a major shift in economic power is that for the vast majority of Americans, our absolute material conditions aren’t horrific, certainly not horrific enough to inspire the kind of long-term investment of personal time and energy for a revolution, when our desires are far more modest and do-able: a fair wage and health coverage and childcare.
The plan for stopping warming at 1.5 C is that there is no realistic plan for stopping warming at 1.5 C. We are simply fucked in ways we can't really comprehend right now, the future is going to be more and more disasters escalating beyond the ability of even rich states to deal with very quickly.
The good news is your lack of a retirement plan isn't likely to matter, none of us will live long enough for that to be an issue.
The problem with socialism is that it's vaporware. There is no draft socialist Constitution of the United States, no draft precis of socialist coroporate law. It's been 150 years since Das Kapital, and these things STILL don't exist. Which is beyond pathetic.
And when socialists seize power anyway and wing it (because there is no actual socialist plan, and never has been), disaster inevitably ensues.
Climate change is a big problem, but yapping about socialism ain't gonna do one damn thing to help.
For a libertarian-inclined person like me, things like this are highly amusing. It reminds me greatly of the revolutionary literary debates among the various Russian radical groups in the 1910s. The same self-confidence the writers are on the right side of history. The same simmering discontent that the masses aren't yet ready for revolution. The same confidence that the right action plan can turn things around from the top.
Mr. Pearl comes perilously close to identifying the real problem the ecosocialists are facing: People don't support them. Jason Hickel thinks we can end greenhouse gas emissions by nationalizing the oil companies. Mike Pearl thinks this won't succeed because it sounds radical to most people. He's right, of course, but assume, for discussion, that President Biden (or maybe President Harris) somehow gets Congress to go along with the idea, and we nationalize the oil companies. Then what? Does he really think that voters will buy into the idea that oil companies should stop producing oil so that consumers can't use oil? If voters really thought that, they'd also support legislation to ban production and use of oil. They'd even stop using oil themselves.
But voters and consumers in industrialized societies don't support such action, even if they do support "drastic action for climate change" in the abstract. Because they have the sense that modern life wouldn't be possible without oil (and natural gas, and most of the other things the eco-utopians want people to do without). But if it's hard to convince Americans and Europeans to give up a modern lifestyle, it will be much harder to convince Chinese, Indians, and Vietnamese to give up their chance at a modern lifestyle - they know what real poverty is, and they know there's a way out of it, and they're determined to try.
The good news is that there's no ecocatastrophe looming. There's not a single scientific paper, let alone a consensus among scientists, that 1.5C, or 2C, or 4C will lead to catastrophe. The last full IPCC assessment predicted rather modest challenges from 2C of warming; the 1.5C assessment was all the same challenges, but a bit more modest.
I personally think the projections of warming are overstated, because all the models used for the projections assume (without evidence) that there are large positive feedbacks - that 1C of warming from carbon will lead to effects (reduced albedo, or increased water vapor, or melting of permafrost, or something else that might be plausible) that cause a further 1C, or 2C, or 5C, or more. I highly recommend the excellent Climate Skeptic blog for a rundown of the science behind this argument, but even if you reject this view, go back to the IPCC. There's no catastrophe coming.
I get the idea that centralized state power tends toward dystopia (I just finished Vasily Grossman's "Stalingrad" and "Life and Fate"), but risking that may be necessary. We have governments nationalize fossil fuel industries and manage the transition and hope we learned enough from the histories of the Nazis and the Soviets to build in safeguards against the inhumanity that could certainly arise. (and who knows? maybe we can get it right if it's purposefully designed)
The alternative seems like it's leading to dystopia anyway and may well lead to totalitarian governments itself.
At least by acting purposefully, we'd have a better chance?
I've been puzzling over the relationship between degrowth and ecosocialism for a while. The first, when you go beyond caricatures of the idea, implies the second, in my view. Reduce wasteful private consumption and build luxurious shared facilities that satisfy needs and wants in a less damaging way. I don't think it is a "do this then we can do that", I think it is a "solving this problem takes us towards that".
But I don't envy anyone trying to make that argument in the context of the US with (what looks from outside) its deeply degraded public sphere (physically and politically).
For the oil companies, taking them out of private hands would be followed by shutting them down. There's an interesting question whether nationalisation (state control) or workers' control would be better for this. A worker's-run oil company would still cook the climate, but a wholly state-controlled one would not help the workers transition to climate-friendly jobs. (And that's without even mentioning Equinor or whatever the Saudi oil company is called).
That's the conversations we should be having, but decades of disinformation has polluted more than just the atmosphere.
Dude, I don’t know what kind of HVAC repair guys and doctors office receptionists you encounter, but from my vantage point they’re not whispering about Robinhood and Coinbase either, whatever those even are (I’m probably a lot more plugged in that your average lower middle class American, and I’m only vaguely aware of those things, in that I’ve heard of them).
To me, the biggest obstacle to a major shift in economic power is that for the vast majority of Americans, our absolute material conditions aren’t horrific, certainly not horrific enough to inspire the kind of long-term investment of personal time and energy for a revolution, when our desires are far more modest and do-able: a fair wage and health coverage and childcare.
So I guess I’m agreeing with your point?
The plan for stopping warming at 1.5 C is that there is no realistic plan for stopping warming at 1.5 C. We are simply fucked in ways we can't really comprehend right now, the future is going to be more and more disasters escalating beyond the ability of even rich states to deal with very quickly.
The good news is your lack of a retirement plan isn't likely to matter, none of us will live long enough for that to be an issue.