to carbon pricing, such as an emissions trading scheme, often considered to be a dysfunctional alternative to stringent industrial standards or carbon taxes. Less direct than a carbon tax, market-based carbon pricing can also be easier to manipulate, as shown by previous experience in Europe.63
Taking into account the healthcare costs caused by pollution, the International Monetary Fund estimates subsidies for the production of fossil fuels at $5.3 trillion in 2015, or 6.5 percent of the global GDP.64 Contrast this with aid to developing countries: the United Nations has spent decades trying to get developed countries to push their contributions up to a mere 0.7 percent of their GDP, only to be continually rebuffed. In 2014, the United States donated $32 billion in overseas aid (much of it tied to the purchase of U.S. products or as loans rather than actual gifts), a miserly 0.19 percent of GDP.65
Are There “Green” Alternatives?
Just as we are told that there aren’t enough resources to feed everyone or lift people out of poverty, we are told that efficient renewable energy technologies don’t exist, or that they would be too expensive to build, or that wind and solar power are unreliable. A 2016 study by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows otherwise: the United States, which is responsible for 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, could “transition to a reliable, low-carbon, electrical generation and transmission system … with commercially available technology and within 15 years.”66
This would mean an almost 80 percent drop in carbon emissions from 1990 levels by the electricity-generating sector by 2030. This new electrical generation and transmission system would not even require storage because it would be regionally integrated. This is exactly the kind of change required for staying within 3.6°F (2°C) of average global warming. It could be done at less cost than continuing to use fossil fuels to produce electricity. Electrical production currently accounts for two-fifths of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
In a world heading rapidly toward irreversible and devastating climate change, not only are renewable sources of electricity the best option; they are the only option if we want reliable electricity. Why? Because thermoelectric power plants, which currently supply 98 percent of global electricity (whether using nuclear, fossil fuel, hydroelectric, or biomass fuel), need massive quantities of water to generate steam for cooling and to pump power for dams. One study estimates that because of lower water levels and warmer temperatures in many rivers, generating capacity could be reduced “by as much as 86% in thermoelectric and 74% in hydro-electric plants.”67
Once seen as an ultra-reliable source of “green” power for developing countries, hydroelectricity is showing itself to be anything but. Brazil, a country that produces 75 percent of its electricity from hydropower (for South America as a whole it’s 63 percent), suffered extensive blackouts in 2014 owing to a four-decades-long drought.68 Despite that, the shortsighted, profit-driven priorities of capital mean that Brazil is still building more mega-dams. These dams displace indigenous peoples from their cultural home and way of life and bury rain forests beneath newly created giant lakes; the lake beds—once rain forest, now a mass of rotting vegetation—contribute massive quantities of the climate-warming gas methane to the atmosphere. Despite massive and ongoing protests by workers, farmers, and indigenous groups, the Brazilian government is still attempting to build the ecologically and socially devastating Belo Monte Dam, the third biggest dam in the world.
According to researchers, the most vulnerable areas for shortfalls in electricity due to water reductions and warmer water are “the United States, southern South America, southern Africa, central and southern Europe, Southeast Asia and southern Australia … because declines in mean annual stream flow are projected combined with strong increases in water temperature under changing climate. This reduces the potential for both hydropower and thermoelectric power generation in these regions.”69
When rain forest is cut down for pastureland or other forms of development, buried under thousands of tons of water behind a dam, and people are displaced from their homes a vital ecosystem linkage is being broken—but it is not the only one. Tropical forests store 40 percent of all terrestrial carbon, and deforestation is a significant contributor (15 percent) to carbon emissions. Hardwood trees, with their thick trunks, giant size, and long lives, are the most significant contributors to that carbon storage mechanism.
A study from São Paolo State University in Brazil analyzed the interactions between 800 animals and 2,000 species of trees, detailing how the changing composition of rain forest trees resulting from the fracturing of the ecosystem is leading to further problems. “Policies to reduce carbon emissions from tropical countries have primarily focused on deforestation,” notes Carlos Peres, a member of the research team. “But our research shows that a decline in large animal populations poses a serious risk for the maintenance of tropical forest carbon storage.”70 Because 95 percent of trees indigenous to the rain forest depend on these animals for seed dispersal. It is only large animals, which are the group in the greatest decline—such as tapirs, fruit-eating monkeys, and large birds like toucans—who can eat the big seeds of hardwood trees and disperse them through defecation. This means that even where rain forests survive, they are gradually losing giant hardwood trees, including important food sources like Brazil nut, cacao, and acai trees.
THE EXAMPLES OF THE LEATHERBACK TURTLES and the large rain forest animals serve to underline the interconnectedness of the biosphere. They also demonstrate why only systemic change, making it possible to tackle all of these problems simultaneously and without political constraint, can reverse the damage. Taken together, our ecological and social crises—together forming a single interwoven socioeconomic crisis—provide a damning indictment of our economic, political, and social system and the way it operates.
Conversely, with the exception of extinction events, these crises are eminently reversible—as long as we can remove the root cause: capitalism. This is critically important news. Since these effects are created by human society, they can be undone by a differently oriented society.
*For convenience, we use 200,000 years to refer to the range of 150,000 to 200,000 years ago commonly given for the emergence of anatomically modern humans.
The Root of the Social-Ecological Crisis
A stark choice faces humanity: save the planet and ditch capitalism, or save capitalism and ditch the planet.
—FAWZI IBRAHIM1
WE MAINTAIN THAT CAPITALISM, of necessity, operates to create our global social-ecological crisis. But before we go into a more detailed explanation of why this is so, let us first briefly examine some of the other explanations for today’s crisis that are commonly put forward—overpopulation, innate human greed and destructiveness, a flawed growth paradigm, and bad policy choices.
One of the most common arguments for the crisis is the “population problem”: there are just too many people in the world, using too many of the Earth’s resources. This is the chief cause of pollution, hunger, resource depletion, and poverty. It is true that the human population has increased greatly over the last few hundred years and that higher populations tend to create more stress in particular locations. Some countries do not have enough agricultural land to feed their people. Many of these countries—for example, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, Singapore, and Great Britain—simply purchase food from abroad. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, China, and several European countries have even leased or bought outright land in parts of Africa or Ukraine, with its deep and
