{"id":3489305,"date":"2021-11-03T11:49:57","date_gmt":"2021-11-03T11:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3489305"},"modified":"2021-11-03T12:36:39","modified_gmt":"2021-11-03T12:36:39","slug":"path-to-extinction-or-path-to-a-livable-future-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2021-11-03\/path-to-extinction-or-path-to-a-livable-future-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Path to Extinction or Path to a Livable Future?: Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"As climate change leads humanity\u2019s march to Armageddon, data surfacing during late 2021<\/a> suggests that the march could be much briefer than previously thought.\u00a0 \u201cNature is starting to emit greenhouse gases in competition with cars, planes, trains, and factories,\u201d asserts Robert Hunziker<\/a>.\u00a0 The Amazon has switched from soaking up CO2 to emitting it.\u00a0 Likewise, the Arctic has flipped from being a carbon sink to becoming an emission source.\u00a0 Permafrost is giving off the three main greenhouse gases (GHGs): CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide. So much Siberian permafrost is melting that buildings are collapsing as methane bombs explode, resulting in craters 100 feet deep.<\/p>\n

As global warming becomes obvious, \u201cclimate denial\u201d fades into the sunset.\u00a0 The twin twilight stars replacing it are the \u201cBlah, blah, blah\u201d of inaction and \u201cenergy denial.\u201d\u00a0 Greta Thunberg<\/a> famously ridiculed the \u201cBlah, blah, blah\u201d of politicians who publicly moan grave concern and then vote to do nothing.\u00a0 The scorn had barely leaped from her lips when news broke regarding the Uinta Basin Railway in Utah<\/a> where \u201c\u2026 the Biden administration is poised to approve a right-of-way through the Ashley National Forest that \u2026 would enable crude oil production in the basin to quadruple to 350,000 barrels a day.\u201d\u00a0 Not much chance of capping oil with this administration.<\/p>\n

The term \u201cenergy denial\u201d reflects an intense belief that \u201calternative energy\u201d (AltE) such as solar, wind, and hydro-power cause nothing but trivial problems which should be ignored in order to allow unlimited expansion of production.\u00a0 Michael Klare<\/a> is one of innumerable progressive authors who use justified hysteria over climate change to demand unjustified spending of trillions of dollars on AltE.<\/p>\n

Stan Cox whacks all three dragon heads in his new book The Path to a Livable Future: A New Politics to Fight Climate Change, Racism <\/em>and the Next Pandemic<\/em>.\u00a0 He dismisses the anti-science and racism of climate denialists such as Trump, strips bare the insincerity of the early Biden administration, and uncovers the lurking dangers of energy denial.<\/p>\n

The book goes beyond these.\u00a0 Cox demonstrates that climate change is not a \u201cthing-unto-itself\u201d which can be halted by a quick fix of a few trillion dollars; but, is a pernicious stain in an interwoven fabric of oppressive systems.\u00a0 This lays the groundwork for outlining a multiplicity of problems which must be addressed to confront climate change.\u00a0 These include reducing production via a participatory economy, establishing financial equality, and building mutual aid networks.<\/p>\n

Conventional Wisdom<\/strong><\/p>\n

Core to Cox\u2019s analysis is a concept that runs so contrary to conventional leftist wisdom that many will not speak it, read it, or publish it.\u00a0 He is at the forefront of authors willing to melt the golden calf of AltE.\u00a0 He slams congressional proposals for a \u201cGreen New Deal,\u201d noting that they fail to include any plans for restricting fossil fuel (FF) production and merely pretend that increases in solar and wind will cause a reduction in its use.\u00a0 Reduction is not written into the plans because FFs are essential for manufacturing AltE equipment.\u00a0 The book portrays the most troubling aspect of AltE to be its promotion\u00a0 as a panacea.\u00a0 This contributes to the preservation of social structures that are most in need of replacement:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we attempt to construct a wind- and solar-powered society that replicates today\u2019s high-energy living arrangements and transportation systems, the result will be the creation of \u2018green sacrifice zones\u2019 in nations that have large deposits of cobalt, lithium, and other metals that go into the mechanisms essential to renewable electricity systems.\u201d (p. 120)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What Else Is There? <\/strong><\/p>\n

His alternative to a massive increase in AltE is simple and obvious: produce a lot less unnecessary stuff.\u00a0 Within this simple truism, issues of complexity rise to the fore.<\/p>\n

Cox continues the tradition of those who realize that increasing complexity leads to an increase in breakdown.\u00a0 More complex systems require more energy to construct, require more energy to function, and are more difficult to fix.\u00a0 Gadgets with 2000 parts are easier to break and harder to repair than are those with 20 parts.\u00a0 Authors such as Joseph Tainter<\/a> and Richard Heinberg<\/a> have applied this idea to human systems, explaining that as societies evolve toward more complexity, they require more social energy to maintain interpersonal connections and are more prone to collapse.<\/p>\n

Cox takes this concept to a higher level for the US in the 2020\u2019s, especially regarding racial and social injustice, diseases like Covid, and climate change:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 how can a just transition to a low emissions economy be systematically planned if, due to intolerable heat and humidity in the Sun Belt and Mississippi Valley, wildfires on the West Coast and in the South, constant pummeling by hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, and sea-level rise on all coasts, we become a nation of climate refugees, with the affluent snapping up the safe ground? \u2026 We can have ecological sustainability or capital accumulation, but not both.\u201d (pp. 127-128)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Entanglements are nowhere more perplexing than in food and agriculture.\u00a0 As Ronnie Cummins<\/a> points out, \u201cAgriculture is the largest employer in the world with 570 million farmers and farm laborers,\u201d with annual spending on food estimated at $7.5 trillion, making it the largest global industry.\u00a0\u00a0 His research background means that his analysis of food, land and agriculture is where Cox\u2019s light shines most brightly.\u00a0 He points out that soil depletion interacts with all of these, which then feeds into climate change.\u00a0 Techno-fixes for climate change tend to require more land or other inputs.\u00a0 Simultaneous use of multiple techno-fixes requires enormous energy input which then compromises ecosystems.<\/p>\n

An example of the complexity is biogas from agricultural, which has been proposed as a source for energy.\u00a0 Cox acknowledges that such energy would not require additional land but points out that \u201cthe amount of gas that can be produced is limited by the quantities of food, crop, and animal wastes available.\u201d (p. 114)\u00a0 Solar energy is a vastly more popular form of energy, but Cox explains its link to agriculture:<\/p>\n

\u201cPlans for \u2018100% renewable\u2019 energy would require solar installation on at least as many square miles of the Earth\u2019s surface as are now occupied by all food production and human settlements combined\u2026\u201d (p. 68)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then, Who Decides?<\/strong><\/p>\n

How then, could a sustainable society reduce energy sufficiently to avoid climate change while providing quality lives and without wrecking global ecology?\u00a0 How will reducing production affect enormous disparities according to race, gender, impoverishment and location?\u00a0 Who decides what to reduce and how?\u00a0 The author answers by returning to ideas from his previous book, Any Way You Slice It<\/em> and combining them with concepts of participatory economics.\u00a0 Subtitled The Past, Present and Future of Rationing<\/em>, that book refuted the assertion that rationing would limit the ability of poor people to attain basic necessities.\u00a0 In his current book, Cox explains that rationing would be a central part of reducing resource inequities:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe phase-out [of FFs] must be accompanied by systems to ensure \u2026 much more equitable access to energy.\u00a0 Today, more affluent, predominantly white households have much higher than average consumption of energy in all forms, while millions of of lower-income households cannot afford as much energy as they need.\u201d (p. 85)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since the largest source of GHGs is unnecessary production by the corporate class plus their luxury waste via \u201cconspicuous consumption,\u201d the focus of rationing must be on producing vastly fewer wasteful products and more of those required for human existence.\u00a0 Cox concludes that \u201cWe need a more serious debate over how to determine which products and services are essential.\u201d (p. 102)\u00a0 Affirming that \u201c\u2026 the path to a livable future is clearly not going to be a capitalist one.\u201d (p. 87) he suggests that economic decisions cannot be left to \u201cBlah, blah, blah\u201d politicians.\u00a0 Instead, they must be discussed far more broadly: \u201cThose who are affected by the rules must be the ones who make the rules and also monitor\u201d the use of resources. (p. 88)\u00a0 Cox advocates citizen\u2019s assemblies as the beginning point of deliberation that would feed into a multi-layered administration that would finalize and carry out polities.<\/p>\n

[slide-anything id=’3472166′]<\/p>\n

As an example of how such a participatory economic system could work, Cox details how Cuba responded to the Covid crisis by collecting information from patients and doctors at neighborhood medical offices and then sending that information to clinics, which summarized it and passed it to national health decision-makers.\u00a0 Far from producing health care less efficient than a market economy, Cuba\u2019s system of health care rationing via participatory input allowed it to have a more successful response to Covid than did the US.<\/p>\n

While rationing systems and participatory economics are essential components of a new society, they are the mechanistic parts.\u00a0 Humanity will not be reborn without passionately adopting a deeper understanding of social relationships.\u00a0 For this, Cox looks to mutual aid, which fuses a world view with ongoing actions of helping others in need.<\/p>\n

It is fitting that one of the first examples Cox gives of mutual aid is the United Farm Workers of the 1960s which provided farmworkers with basic provisions alongside mobilizing for labor rights.\u00a0 After all, labor unions throughout history have supported those on strike.\u00a0 The workplaces of the world are where humanity collectively produces those things required for our survival.<\/p>\n

The book also describes how the Black Panther Party offered free clinics, sickle-cell anemia screening and the Breakfast for Children program.\u00a0 Huey Newton called them \u201csurvival programs, meaning survival pending revolution.\u201d (p. 145)\u00a0 Such visions of people helping each other from an inner desire to do so is reminiscent of Che Guevara\u2019s conception of the \u201cnew man,\u201d a dream that became the germ of the Cuban health system.<\/p>\n

Going Forward<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even the best analyses suffer an occasional fault and this book is no exception.\u00a0 Though others may skip over it, I spent so many years opposing incinerators that reading this line evoked a \u201cHuh?\u201d from me: \u201cMedical wastes can harbor pathogens and therefore usually must be incinerated.\u201d (p. 34)\u00a0 Actually, even the worst human pathogens do not require anywhere near the 2000 degree heat that incinerators reach for their destruction.\u00a0 Autoclaves work fine for medwaste and do not create the variety of toxins that incinerators do.\u00a0 Fortunately, calling for burning medwaste was a stand-alone lapse that actually runs counter to the author\u2019s overall perspective of advocating the most environmental solution available.<\/p>\n

The other problem, however, recurs.\u00a0 Though frequently chastising the Democratic Party (DP) for inaction, the author turns to them for solutions: \u201cWe must show them [DP] that they are mandated to represent the will of the people, not the Silicon Valley tycoons, the natural gas extractors\u2026\u201d (p. 140)\u00a0 In reality, neither of the two big money parties is likely to take \u201cmeaningful action\u201d regarding climate catastrophe.\u00a0 If the Trump cabal garners support from disparaging ethnic minorities and immigrants, the DP rallies its base with calls for \u201cmore stuff,\u201d yielding it even less likely to advocate producing less of the unnecessary.<\/p>\n

It has long been said in many ways that problems cannot be solved by relying on individuals and institutions who created them.\u00a0 The novel crisis of climate change nested within intertwined social problems calls for new ways of thinking \u2013 ways which are manifested in new mutual aid groups, new trade unions, and new political institutions.<\/p>\n

Overall, The Path to a Livable Future<\/em> may be the most serious and thought-provoking new book on climate change available.\u00a0 It challenges shortcomings of dominant paradigms and offers alternatives that do not shy away from dilemmas.<\/p>\n

The proposed solution that is most likely to be scorned is the assertion that it is possible to reduce production without harming the world\u2019s poor.\u00a0 It is worth noting that Cuba has attained a longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality rate than the US while spending less than 10% per person per year.\u00a0 Indisputably, a drastic reduction in dollars spent on health care can accompany a higher quality of life.<\/p>\n

When Cox goes through methods of cooling during hot summers and the energy needed for agricultural production, he carefully explains not only the complexity of each but how they fit into the nexus of systems affected by and affecting climate change.\u00a0 The threat to humanity\u2019s existence from climate change is far too profound and connected to far too many other intricate difficulties to simplify it with slogans for quick fixes.\u00a0 It is well past the time to face hard decisions of how to reduce obscene levels of corporate production instead of fiddling with perpetual energy fantasies while the planet burns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is well past the time to face hard decisions of how to reduce obscene levels of corporate production instead of fiddling with perpetual energy fantasies while the planet burns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3489026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[213523,213527,79717,79716,79718,213530],"tags":[227140,144770,189817,148219,95871],"class_list":["post-3489305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-act-resources","category-act-resources-featured","category-economy","category-energy","category-environment","category-environment-featured","tag-alternatives-to-capitalism","tag-climatechangeresponses","tag-mutualaidnetworks","tag-participatoryeconomics","tag-poweringdown"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3489305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3489305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3489305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3489026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3489305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3489305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3489305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}