System Change

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Will Greta Thunberg's campaign destroy jobs?

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Will Greta Thunberg's campaign destroy jobs?

as Italian PM Meloni suggests...

Ann Pettifor
Oct 30, 2022
17
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Will Greta Thunberg's campaign destroy jobs?

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With acknowledgement to History Matters: New Deal Public Art

Ms Meloni and her fellow authoritarians promise to protect jobs and companies from climate campaigners.

What do climate campaigners offer the public? What is our vision for the economically insecure?

In its latest manifestation capitalism thrives on impunity, economic insecurity, climate denial - alongside climate breakdown. It has led to what some have described as “fossil fascism”.

As such it is a system incapable of producing a world leader like Nelson Mandela or FDR: courageous, credible and wise. Instead the system has spawned authoritarian climate-deniers like Trump, Bolsonaro, Modi, Orban, Putin, Xi and lately, Ms Georgia Meloni who told a crowd at a June forum of right-wing parties in Spain that

"Greta Thunberg's ideology will lead us to lose thousands of companies and millions of jobs in Europe"


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This post was going to be all about COP27…But then I learned that the radical Mike Davis - a Los Angeles truck driver turned scholar, Marxist ecologist, urban historian and political activist - had died.

Twitter avatar for @CraigOGilmore
Craig Gilmore @CraigOGilmore
RIP :: to a remarkably generous man. In addition to the work he's left us, he introduced thousands of people to each other, to new organizations, to new & old ideas. He connected us in ways none of us could have imagined.
Image
1:59 AM ∙ Oct 26, 2022
1,377Likes135Retweets

His death got me thinking. not just about how his life, his writing and his scholarship enhanced and inspired the lives of others; but also about his advice to young activists. That they “should put their Bakunin, Lenin, or Slavoj Zizek temporarily aside and dust off a copy of FDR’s 1944 campaign platform: an Economic Bill of Rights.”

Twitter avatar for @DavidpStein
David Stein @DavidpStein
This Mike Davis essay changed my life. RIP. “Some young activists might…dust off a copy of FDR’s 1944 campaign platform: an Economic Bill of Rights…It was a clarion call to social citizenship [enumerating] rights to employment, housing, healthcare…”
theragblog.blogspot.comMike Davis : Ten Immodest CommandmentsFollowing in Charlton Heston’s immodest footsteps. Ten immodest commandments What, indeed, have I learned from my fumbling-and-bungling lif...
12:53 AM ∙ Oct 26, 2022
1,380Likes208Retweets

In an age of profound economic insecurity and uncertainty, reading Roosevelt’s ‘Second Bill of Rights’ yesterday reminded me that not long ago social democratic politicians cared about society’s need to engage in meaningful, remunerative work, as well as humanity’s entitlement to the basic universal services that grant physical security.

Roosevelt had argued that the "political rights" guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights had "proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness". His remedy was to declare an "economic bill of rights" to guarantee these specific rights:

  • Employment

  • An adequate income for food, shelter, and recreation

  • Farmers' rights to a fair income

  • Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies

  • Decent housing

  • Adequate medical care

  • Social security

  • Education

COP27 and Economic Insecurity

The question of economic insecurity was at the top of my mind as I began to worry about why it is almost inevitable that COP27 - like all previous COPs - will fail to address the climate emergency with any urgency.

Has it something to do with global economic insecurity, I wondered?

Given the current balance of power in the world, COP27 cannot possibly rise to the scale of threat humanity faces. Political leaders - many in hock to private finance - are focused on stoking trade wars, real wars and global divisions. No world leader has the vision or political will to unite the world behind urgent, concerted and comprehensive action by ‘big green states’ to shut fossil fuel extraction down NOW.

And yet, the physics demands that we must.

As the above chart shows, since the first United Nation Convention of the Parties (COP1) took place in 1992, there has been absolutely no progress in cutting total emissions - thanks to ‘greenwashing’ by states and corporations.

Yet total emissions - not national or regional emissions - are all that matter to the planet, as Prof. Kevin Anderson has argued,.

Twitter avatar for @KevinClimate
Kevin Anderson @KevinClimate
Two & a half years on, or put another way, a further 100 billion tonnes of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere … & virtually all ‘net-zero nations’ with oil & gas reserves are seeking yet more new fields.
Twitter avatar for @AnnaLB18
Anna B @AnnaLB18
Clear, concise and sobering information from @KevinClimate. But here we are, 2 years further down the road with no significant changes and no clear plan, and other parts of the world are bearing the brunt. https://t.co/OtexcQQzT3
8:05 AM ∙ Sep 17, 2022
419Likes200Retweets

Far from cutting emissions, investors and corporations are profiting handsomely from financialised, speculative markets in fossil fuels: from deregulation, public tax subsidies and tax evasion; and from CO2 dumping. It was reported last week that Shell paid no tax on their UK profits this past year.

Twitter avatar for @GlobalJusticeUK
Global Justice Now @GlobalJusticeUK
Shell’s latest extreme profits are an outrage at a time of spiralling energy bills and deepening climate disasters. It's time to make them pay. 👊 bit.ly/3TELj52
bit.lyShell says it has not paid any windfall tax; European Central Bank hikes rates by 75 basis points – as it happenedOil giant expects not to pay levy in 2022 because of North Sea investment relief; ECB doubles key interest rate to highest level in over a decade
9:46 AM ∙ Oct 27, 2022
19Likes22Retweets

That is why COP27 will fail. Because financialised capitalism, embraced by US Democrats, European Social Democrats, Chinese Communists and Russian plutocrats, has generated economic and ecological inequality and imbalances, recurring financial crises, and political extremism.

To top it all it has accelerated the burning of fossil fuels.

The evolution of industrial capitalism into a global, financialised bubble economy has overwhelmed the ecosystem - and also society.

Economic insecurity and climate activism

Insecurity obliges millions of ordinary voters to turn to the ‘strong men and women’ that promise protection from ‘free’ markets in work, food, energy and money - but also from climate activists and supposed job-killers like Greta Thunberg. They do so, because, as Roosevelt wrote in 1944:

"Necessitous men are not free men”

People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”

These are the economic conditions in which the population is silenced and made passive - even as ecological breakdown threatens their lives and livelihoods.

What do climate campaigners offer society?

What is our vision for the economically insecure? Beyond the dystopian horrors and inevitable collapse of our near future? Are there only hair-shirt solutions?

I may be generalising by arguing that ‘green’ campaigners are wary of advocating economic rights. But that is my experience. There is a fear that full employment will lead to “growth” and more “production” of unnecessary goods leading to increased exploitation of the planet’s finite resources. So hairshirt policies are all that’s on the menu: a fossil-free utopia of localisation, encounters with nature, increased well-being. No certainty that this offer will put food on the table and provide the dignity of work. Instead there is a three-day week as alternative to mass unemployment. Universal Basic Income (UBI) as opposed to regular, decent employment income. Sadly, there is no big popular campaign for universal basic services (UBS) - for everyone.

To shape a vision, we who are rooted in the labour movement must surely join with climate campaigners to take on a global financialized system that both fuels and profits from fossil fuels and from the economic and job insecurity of the 99%?

At the very least we must challenge the Meloni case, and offer to protect society’s right to paid, meaningful and dignified work.

The logic is clear: there is a whole lot of work to be done to fix the damage done to the ecosystem by financialised capitalism.

There is even more work to be done to build a new, safer world of social and political stability. Far more work than we can dream of. Cultural work. Educational work. Work that cannot be undertaken by deploying fossil fuels.

There’s the immense work of building and repairing our ecosystem. The hard work of repairing and re-making our broken social networks so that ‘safety nets’ become stronger and more resilient. Work that will not generate greenhouse gas emissions. Work only undertaken by people granted the right to economic and physical security. The security of income, health, nutritious food and water, protective housing, education and civic and political rights.

A climate change campaign that promises first to satisfy human needs and security, - not insatiable ‘wants’ - would be in a position to more forcefully attack right-wing complacency on the threat posed by climate breakdown and ecological collapse.

It would be a climate campaign that offers both hope and work.

A Bill of Economic Rights that assures people of equality in the pursuit of happiness AND the security and safety provided by a stable climate and ecosystem.

No authoritarian leader makes that offer.

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Will Greta Thunberg's campaign destroy jobs?

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