A Historic Event or a Fraud? -- Critical Thoughts on the Paris Climate Accord

Considering that so much depends on whether global warming can be arrested soon, it was no wonder that all thinking people had turned their attention to Paris, where on 13^th December the COP21 "successfully" ended, with great jubilation. I too followed the process through the media.

Positive and Negative Reactions

A day after, I read the following comments: (1) "Today is a historic day: as tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Paris, politicians finalized a major new global climate agreement". And (2) "It’s a fraud really, a fake,”… “It’s just bullshit…"¹ The first was made by May Boeve, the US national organizer of 350.org, a big NGO, that is playing a leading role in the climate justice movement, the second by James Hansen, a former NASA scientist, considered the father of climate change awareness. Which one can we regard as the correct assessment?
    Given that nobody in my position has the time and energy to read all the reports and comments on the COP21, I hope that my readers would forgive me if I have overlooked some important point in the agreement or an important comment on it. But fairness demands that I also mention a middle position, for example that of Thomas Friedman, a liberal columnist of the New York Times. He wrote:"I had low expectations for the U.N. climate meeting, and it met all of them – beautifully. I say that without cynicism. Any global conference that includes so many countries can’t be expected to agree on much more than the lowest common denominator."²
    That is understandable. As far as I could follow, nobody had big expectations. But then I do not understand how May and other prominent people of big NGOs can be so enthusiastic about it. Bill McKibben wrote: "With the climate talks in Paris now over, the world has set itself a serious goal." ³  I have doubts. Was the goal really set seriously? Friedman wrote: "But the fact that the lowest common denominator is now so high [he means the target 1.5⁰ Celcius] – a willingness by 188 countries to offer plans to steadily and verifiably reduce their carbon emissions – means we still have a chance." ² Again I have doubts. I would very much like to agree with Boeve, McKibben, and Friedman. But at present at least, I cannot, for reasons I shall present below.

Why Call it a Fraud?

I too think, like Hansen, the accord was a fraud, but for reasons very different from those of his. I think it was only because they were afraid of being branded as the guilty in case the COP21 failed to reach an agreement that the major CO₂ emitter countries reluctantly decided to sign this very weak paper. But paper, as the Germans say, is patient. If you want evidence, then look at the position with which the government of India went to Paris. Only a few months before the COP21 began, the government of India had announced the policy decision to double India's coal production in the next 5 years. Just a few days before he left for Paris, Mr. Javadekar, India's environment minister, had said in an interview: "I'm asking the developed world to vacate the carbon space so that we can park our development."⁴
    Retorting to US Secretary of State John Kerry's criticism of India's decision to double its coal production, Javadekar had remarked it was "absolutely unfair and unacceptable," especially since the CO₂ reduction targets announced by the developed countries would fail to arrest the climate change crisis, which they had a historical responsibility of fixing after a century of pumping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. He also warned the Americans against "bullying" India.⁴
    Or take the case of Norway, very rich in oil and gas. Just twelve days after they signed the Paris accord, the prime minister of the country said:"We believe that in a situation in which we shall have attained the goal of Paris, there will be demand for Norwegian oil and gas."⁵ So they are continuing with all the plans and projects for extracting oil and gas from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. While claiming that they want to protect the Arctic from the effects of global warming, they are speculating on the melting of the arctic ice that will make more access to oil and gas possible. It seems they are saying (in German): Wasch mir den Pelz aber mach mich nicht nass, or (in English): We want to eat the cake and have it too.
    These are actually irreconcilable positions. We can formulate them as two most fundamental controversial questions: (1) Should the underdeveloped countries be allowed to develop their economies to the level reached by the USA or Germany? (2) And must the economies of the developed countries be scaled down, in order to vacate the carbon space in favor of the former? In Paris, these questions were probably not put on the table in these stark terms. In the interview referred to above, Mr. Javedkar, while asserting India's right – implicitly the right of all underdeveloped countries – to development, did not raise the second question. The Paris accord too recognizes all underdeveloped countries' "right to development". It "… aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty, … " (Article 2). But it does not mention the second question.
    It appears that all participants in COP21, the big and small environment NGOs, publicists, and activists take it as a matter of course that the answer to the first question is Yes, and that to the second is No. The controversy was just papered over. It is simply taken for granted that a deus ex machina, namely technological development, would enable humankind to solve the problem of global warming without causing any pain to anybody, and that it only needs some more time and large investments in renewable energies and efficiency-raising technologies. In the rich, developed countries, a large part of the hope of technology optimists is placed on the carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, although not even its feasibility has yet been established. Bill Mckibben, founder and leader of 350.org, charts the strategy for the coming years.⁶ The state(s) must do the following:

"You’ve got to stop fracking right away … . You have to start installing solar panels and windmills at a breakneck pace – and all over the world. The huge subsidies doled out to fossil fuel have to end yesterday, and the huge subsidies to renewable energy had better begin tomorrow. You have to raise the price of carbon steeply and quickly, so everyone gets a clear signal to get off of it."

And he lays down the task of the movement as follows:

"There can be no complacency after the Paris talks. Hitting even the 1.5C target will need drastic, rapid action. Think of the climate movement as personal trainers – for the next few years our job is to yell and scream at governments everywhere to get up off the couch."

The most popular article of faith of environmental NGOs and activists (not of governments) is that – given the right policy decisions such as those laid down by McKibben in the above quote, and correspondingly large amounts of state subsidies – it would be possible in two to three decades to meet 100 percent of humanity's energy needs by means of renewable energy technologies, so that burning fossil fuels would not be necessary at all; there would also be no need for the CCS technology.
    Hansen calls the accord a fraud, mainly because he sees no concrete action plan in it, only promises that, moreover, the signatory states are required to implement gradually, beginning only in 2020. His idea was a tax or price or fee of $15 a tonne of CO₂ to be paid by major emitters. He argued that only this measure could force down CO₂ emissions quickly enough. But he found no support, not even among big environment groups, because, as he said, nobody wants to scare people off by talking off new taxes.¹
    I could have supported the tax proposal of Hansen if he had stopped there. But, like the others mentioned above, he too believes that ultimately it is only by replacing fossil fuel energies with clean energies that we can avert climate catastrophes. For he says in the same interview: "We need to have a rising fee on carbon in order to move to clean energy."¹
    Unlike Hansen, I see the fraud taking place since long, and it is contained in the very conceptions of the proposed solutions – in all parts thereof and both in their short as well as long-term versions. Firstly, the whole COP process from the very beginning, i.e. since 1992 onwards, is swearing to promote sustainable development and eradicate poverty while at the same time protecting the environment and averting global warming. The COP21 did the same. Otherwise the developing countries would not have taken part in the process. But how do you, in the short term, eradicate poverty in developing countries, e.g. in India, South Africa or Colombia, if you make power much dearer by (a) imposing a tax of $15 a tonne of CO₂ payable by major emitters (that includes India), (b) by ending all subsidies to fossil fuels, and (c) paying huge subsidies to renewable energies (where will the huge sums come from)?
    Most persons, groups, parties etc. mentioned above simply assume that economic growth i.e. growth in prosperity can and will continue without any problem when the fossil fuel energies have been replaced with "clean" energies. As against that, I (and my political friends, e.g. Ted Trainer) believe since long that it is absolutely necessary that the major industrial countries, including China, India, Brazil etc. purposely bring about a contraction of their economies – in order not only to stop burning more and more fossil fuels but also to reduce the general level of environmental pollution. We do not think that economic growth would be possible if we really want to save the biosphere. I can also cite evidence supporting this belief: In recent history, the only time CO₂ emission and general environmental pollution went down in a large region were the 1990s, i.e. after the Eastern European economies, especially the then second biggest economy of the world, that of the Soviet Union, collapsed. But in the Paris accord there is no mention of this necessity. The whole de-growth movement has been totally ignored, also by the big environmental NGOs. They simply believe in miracles.
    One may ask why I doubt that it would be possible, if not soon, then at least in the near future or in the long term to fully or at least largely replace fossil fuel energies (and other nonrenewable resources) with renewable ones. After all, technological progress is taking place all the time! Basing myself on Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's differentiation between feasible and viable,⁷ I have been expressing this doubt for the last 25 years. It is not possible to repeat all my arguments here; interested people may read some of my writings recommended below.⁸ Here I only want to refer to two sets of facts that serve as indications that my doubt may be justified. (1) Already in 1994, Eurosolar and its friends and associate organizations claimed in a full-page advertisement in the German print media that solar energy based on the technology developed till then could compete with fossil fuel energies. But today, after twenty more years of research and development, we see that solar energy is still neither competitive nor viable without large subsidies. That is why even today new coal-fired power plants are being built? (2) India is very rich in sunshine and wind. Still its government wants to double coal production in order to supply energy to the masses. Why? And why do its politicians say, it is only coal that India has for energy? Are the Indian engineers stupid or ignorant? Or have they all sold away their conscience to the coal lobby?
    Protagonists of green growth, i.e. growth based on 100% transition to renewables are all very intelligent people. Yet they are ignoring these facts and questions. If they are not intentionally bluffing, then they are, I believe, suffering from an illusion.
There are some more reasons why I criticize the big environmental NGOs. (1) They – unlike Hansen, who has called the whole agreement a fraud – have exonerated the political class (the authors of the Paris Deal) from all guilt, as if they are not always ready to fulfill the wishes of big corporations, as if they are actually good people who, like the NGOs, care for the interests of the masses, the only "villains" being the fossil fuel industries. Opposing these villains are, in their view, the good "ordinary people", the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, as if they do not want to consume more and more energy and other products of fossil fuels. This is too naïve, if it is not a fraud too. (2) They have isolated the climate crisis from all other crises involved in mankind's present predicament, as if they are not interconnected. They simply ignore the totality of the crisis. (3) They do not seem to know that the $100 billion that the politicians of the rich countries have promised to pay to the victims of global warming will first have to be generated by producing more green house gases. (4) It appears, moreover, that they have not noticed that these are all only promises. Don't they know that governments, especially in times of economic crisis, never deliver what they promise? The UNHCR, for example, recently reduced the food ration to the Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan etc. because they haven't received all the money that was promised to them.
    But the more basic problem I have with those who are euphoric about the Paris accord is that the signatory governments as well as the NGOs, green and left parties etc. do not even mention the real and deeper causes of the ecological, economic, political and social miseries of humankind, of which climate change and large-scale migration are just currently the most glaring manifestations. These real and deeper causes are the continuously growing demands, aspirations and ambitions of a continuously growing world population, while our resource base is continuously dwindling and the ability of nature to absorb man-made pollution is continuously diminishing – in short, the lunatic idea that in a finite world infinite growth is possible.

Is the System Question Irrelevant?

What I, moreover, found very strange is that, all along, all people involved in the COP process assumed that the envisioned drastic changes in such a vital factor as the energy supply base of the modern industrial economies could be undertaken without requiring any changes in the current political-economic system.
    Of course, one could not expect from the politicians who signed the deal that they would include in it a clause stating that the system they have built up and which has made them rich and powerful also needs to be changed. But how come also the rest of the involved people did not have the slightest doubt that the huge problem can be solved within the framework of capitalism and free market economy? Outside this circle, however, in the context of the problems at hand, the system question had already been posed several hundred times, in speeches and writings, before the COP21 began. In TV news broadcasts, I have even a few times seen pictures of radical leftist protesters carrying banners and placards with the slogan "System change, not climate change".
    Can't one expect of honest and thinking NGO and media people that they also at least consider the possibility that the technological breakthroughs – 100% renewable energy, CCS etc., on which they are placing all their hopes – do not occur or do not occur in time? If they do not occur, shouldn't one have a plan B for averting the catastrophes? In plain English, if humanity can no longer indulge in the growth compulsions inherent in capitalism with its principle of competition in a free market economy, shouldn't the state(s) step in and order a stop in further economic growth? Shouldn't the state(s) then tell the people that they have to accept a contracting economy and all the consequences thereof? Shouldn't the state(s), from then on, plan an orderly withdrawal from the present mad economic system?⁹
    Unfortunately, many people who do raise the system question – there are even some prominent people among them – often do that half-heartedly. They often question "capitalism as we know it or as it is today" or "globalized neo-liberal capitalism", as if a better form of capitalism is conceivable, as if it could be made ecological, social or humane, and compatible with economic contraction. I do not think such half-hearted critiques are of any use. Such people do not realize that as long as the motive of profit maximization and the principles of private ownership of means of production, selfishness, and competition remain – and these are the most essential elements of capitalism –, there would always be a compulsion to grow, whatever that may cost human society and nature. That will bring to nought all efforts to overcome the climate crisis and many other crises.

Conclusion. Can Anything be Done Before an Eco-Socialist Revolution?

A friend said to me: look, Saral, I am convinced what you are saying is correct. But your eco-socialist revolution may never happen or it may come too late. Can't the powers that be do something short of your revolution, and soon? And can't ordinary people, who are afraid of too radical a change, urge them to do something in this emergency situation.
    I think that is possible. But a fraud on the people is not what I can advocate. A fraud cannot help even if we, as Mckibben urges us to do, "yell and scream at governments everywhere to get up off the couch."
    I can today imagine that an honest, well-meaning (think of PODEMOS and SYRIZA), and eco-sensitive social democratic party in near future comes to power through an election and gives itself, against the background of humanity's serious multifaceted crisis, an immediate program that could be implemented within the framework of current kinds of democracy and capitalism.
    The top priority of such a program should be to tell the voters the truth about limits to growth (and prosperity) and the necessity of respecting them, and then to take all feasible measures to gradually curtail economic growth, if not immediately and totally stop it. That should not be impossible. In fact, in Japan and the EU (with the exception of Germany), the economies are already stagnating – in Japan for the last 15 or 25 years and in the EU since 2008. Already now, people in the rich countries are getting used to stagnating economies or (as in China) falling growth rates. In Greece, Portugal and Spain people have experienced falling wages and cuts in salaries, pensions, and social benefits. We only have to make a virtue of this unwelcome development by openly and courageously saying that a recession is good for the environment including the climate. The government must only equitably distribute the burdens of protecting the environment in this way, and the burdens of the resulting unemployment by reducing by law the average weekly working hours.
    In the broad environmental movements in the Western capitalist countries, we can find many concrete proposals and concrete examples for this policy: Governments can promote public transportation and discourage private motorization. Activists can start a system of borrowable cars and two-wheelers owned by groups. Governments can pass orders to the effect that individual private cars can be used only on alternate days etc. etc. Above all, governments must stop all previous policies of promoting growth. All such things work against the capitalist ideal of growth and lead us toward collectivism. In the past, capitalists have had to swallow them.
    As far as I can observe, in the developed countries, among the masses, understanding for such policies is growing, although it is still far from becoming the majority view. Particularly political parties that want to get elected to parliaments are still not ready to adopt such a program. The Green Party of Germany has of course, long ago, betrayed its original program. But the latter was really an ecological social-democratic one.¹⁰ Here lies the great task of extra-parliamentary environmentalists and eco-socialist groups and individuals: to mobilize mass support for such a program. Today, the chances that they would succeed are much greater than in the early 1980s.
    In the underdeveloped countries, the two most important parts of such an immediate program should be to stop population growth and build up a modest social security and job guarantee system.¹¹ Fortunately, both ideas are well accepted among the elites of many of such countries, although implementation is weak. To drive the illusions of catching-up economic development and growing prosperity out of their heads would become much easier once the elites of the developed countries have done their part of the work.

 References

1. The first was communicated to me by my friend Kamran Nayeri. For the second see
Hansen, James (2015): http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud

2. Friedman, Thomas L. (2015):
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/opinion/paris-climate-accord-is-a-big-big-deal.html?_r=02

3. McKibben, Bill (2015) http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/13/paris-climate-talks-15c-marathon-negotiating-physics

4. Javadekar http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2015/11/21/prakash-javadekar-intervi_n_8617864.html

5. Bigalke, Silke (2015) "An der Eiskante" . In Süddeutache Zeitung, 28.12. 2015

6. Mckibben, Bill (2015) http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/13/paris-climate-talks-15c-marathon-negotiating-physics

7. Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas (1978) "Technology Assessment: The Case of the Direct Use of Solar Energy", in Atlantic Economic Journal, December.

8. My detailed arguments on this issue are contained in
chapter 4 of my book Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? (see 9),
in http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/2014/04/krugmans-illusion-we-becoming-richer.html
and in http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/2015/09/root-causes-of-cleavages-in-ecological.html

9. I have thoroughly discussed these questions in my book Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? – A Critical Analysis of Humanity's fundamental Choices. (1999. Zed Books, London).
In German translation: Die Nachhaltige Gesellschaft – Eine kritische Analyse der Systemalternativen. (2001. Rotpunkt Verlag, Zürich)

10. See: Saral Sarkar (1994) Green-Alternative Politics in West Germany – Vol.II: The Greens. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.

11. For details of my argumentation see http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/2012/08/polemics-is-useless-proposal-for-eco.html

 

What it Means to be Leftist

A few days ago, I read an article entitled

What it Means to be Leftist,

which appeared in India as an editorial in the political magazine Frontier. I read it because the question is very important. Here is the link

http://www.frontierweekly.com/articles/vol-48/48-24/48-24-Edi-What%20it%20Means%20to%20be%20Leftist.html

I was very dissatisfied with the text, which is the response of the editor to the question she herself had put. So I wrote the following letter to the editor. I do not know whether the magazine will publish it. So I post it on this blog.
    I hope my readers would be interested.


Letter to the editor

To
the editor
Frontier.

Reg. The editorial What it Means to be Leftist
         In Frontier, December 20 – 26, 2015

Dear Sir,

the title attracted me very much, but the text disappointed me at least as much. You put a fundamental question, but what you serve us in response is only a critique of the current political maneuvers of only two Indian parties that are traditionally considered to be left parties. It is far from adequate to the title-question. I know this question is being put in many parts of the world.
    In the last paragraph you write: "The communist left needs theory …". I agree very much. I suppose you mean a new theory. Otherwise you would have written that the communist left should follow their traditional theory, namely Marxism or Marxism-Leninsm or Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, in order to define their task at the present time. But then you yourself arbitrarily lay down very narrow parameters within which this new theory should be produced: "… a theory which can generate momentum in people's struggles within Indian borders, … ." Why within Indian borders? A new theory, especially one that should be produced by the communist left, should be meant to have validity for the whole world. Communists are not supposed to be provincial. Such a new theory building process must begin with an objective analysis of the present world situation. Only then should one define the task at the present juncture.
    Why don't you tell the author of the editorial that she herself should suggest the outlines of this new theory? I am feeling tempted to suggest a beginning of this new theory building process: Walter Benjamin wrote:

"Marx says revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps it is entirely different. Revolutions are perhaps the attempt of humanity travelling in a train to pull the emergency brake."

With best wishes

Saral Sarkar

The Refugee-Migrant Crisis of the EU -- Its Deeper Causes and Messages

The media are bubbling with the refugee-migrant crisis, the new great crisis of the EU, the significance of which dwarfs that of the Greek economic crisis. It may appear that everything that can be said on this subject has already been said and written. But it is not so. What is missing in the discussions till now is an in-depth understanding of the crisis, without which even highly competent and experienced politicians and administrators would not find a lasting solution to it. I am not going to tell them what they should immediately do in order to gain control of the crisis. But allow me to try to fill up the big gap between describing and really understanding the problem.

Some Facts and clarifications:

Let us begin by taking cognizance of some facts that usually remain unmentioned in the discussions. I do not however intend to repeat those that my readers can be expected to regularly get through TV and newspapers.

Three categories of "Refugees"

Let us first differentiate between three categories of "refugees". (1) Let us call those who were suffering political persecution in their native country and are therefore seeking asylum political refugees. (2) Those fleeing because of some kind of war or violent conflict should better be called war refugees. (3) Those who are leaving their native country in search of a better life or a better job in another country should be called (economic) migrants. They may be just poor people from un(der)developed countries or people who are unemployed for a long time. This categorization cannot be a clear-cut one, for people may have two or all of the above reasons to flee their native country. For the sake of convenience, let us use the term refugee-migrants.

It is a global Problem

Let us leave aside the legal migrants, who are more or less welcome or at least tolerated in the host countries.
    The refugee-migrant problem is a global one and exists since long. There are today worldwide 60 Million such people. Some 11 million Latino migrants are illegally living in the USA. It is not as if only rich countries like the USA and EU attract refugee-migrants. Even countries that are not really rich but are only perceived to be a little better off and having relatively better job opportunities (actually, only a little less unemployment) than the neighboring countries attract migrants from the latter. Thus India has an unknown number of illegal migrants from Bangladesh, Malaysia has a large number of legal and illegal migrants from Indonesia, the Republic of South Africa from the neighboring African countries. In Kenia, the largest refugee camp of the world (in Dadaab ) is the temporary home of half a million Somali war refugees. In the Sahel Zone too there is a regular – legal and just tolerated – intra-regional flow and outflow of migrant workers. Some years ago, I also read of illegal Chinese migrant workers in the UK. Russia has its legal and illegal migrants from central Asia – most of them Muslims.
    At several international borders, walls and fences have been built to keep unwelcome refugee-migrants away, e.g. between the USA and Mexico, between India and Bangladesh, and most recently between Hungary and its neighboring countries. The EU created the Frontex, a high-tech border police organization, to prevent illegal entry. Australia uses force to prevent all ships carrying illegal migrants from touching its shores. Those who succeed in illegally landing in Australia are immediately deported to the neighboring pacific island of Nauru. Malaysia expels illegal Indonesian workers and even legal ones who have lost their job. Sometimes, the poor ones among them, who generally take cheap and unsafe boats for returning home, die of drowning in the sea. So we can say that the present acute refugee-migrant crisis of the EU is only the latest manifestation of a long-standing global problem.

The Economic Pull Factor

The global refugee-migrant problem therefore forms the general background against which we should discuss about any particular refugee-migrant problem. That of the EU, particularly of Germany, is, at present, only the most conspicuous sign of the very bad general state of the world and of the current system of global governance. For many European officials it is outrageous that hundreds of thousands of foreigners are gate-crashing one European country after the other – openly, illegally and without being registered by any authority. As a Bavarian politician recently said, it is tantamount to capitulation of the state if it cannot protect its borders.
    They are mostly young men and women. There are hardly any purely political refugees among them. And not all are fleeing only because of some war or violent conflict in their native country. It is clear that most of them are, at least partly, migrants. They are in search of a better life in one of the rich countries of the world. They are simply trying their luck. Proportionately perhaps not many, but in absolute terms significant numbers of them are going to the emerging industrial countries, such as India, Brazil and South Africa. Those who are migrating from North Africa, the Sahel region, and central Africa are mostly poor and unemployed. Their hope is to get work, some work and income. In TV interviews they even say that openly, do not pretend to be a refugee. A young Ghanaian said: "I have no problem with my state, politics here is all right. But here there is no job for me." An elderly poor peasant couple in a Senegal village told the TV journalist in the presence of their twelve year old son: "We told him, son, there is no future for you in this country. Go to Europe, somehow, we shall give you the money." Even the refugees from Syria, where the strong push factor of war is operating, are not at all thinking of leaving Europe and going back home once peace has returned there. They too want to build up a better future for themselves and their children. One Syrian man with a child on his shoulders said after arriving in Lesbos: "Thank God, I have now arrived in Europe. Here I can live in safety. Here I can fulfill my ambition." Another man from Syria said he has studied economics in Aleppo. His wife and children would come later, after he has settled down here. His ambition is to do a doctorate in Germany. A young man from Lahore was asked why he left Pakistan; after all, no war is raging there. He answered, it is because of the Taliban, they are making living there very difficult. Contrast this with the Somali refugees in Kenia's Dadaab camp, who are very happy to be able to return home.
    Except for the huge numbers this time, there is nothing new in this. I remember having seen in the 1990s a fictional film – entitled "The March"¹ – on the same phenomenon. In 1991, we have seen photos of several thousand Albanian would-be migrants in a few chartered ocean-going ships arriving in Bari (Italy).² Even barbed wire fences we have seen before. In 2005, we have seen TV-pictures of hundreds of young Africans trying to scale those of Ceuta and Melilla³ , and in this way enter EU territory. We have seen TV-pictures of young Africans trying to reach the Canary Islands on flimsy fishing boats.

The real and Deeper Causes

Ecology, Economy and the Prosperity Gap

We should differentiate the immediate, i.e. the superficial, causes from the root causes. Most European politicians are saying the really effective solution of their current refugee-migrant crisis would require removing its root causes, which they identify as the civil wars in Syria and Iraq and poverty in Africa.
    But political persecution and civil wars, even poverty, are, generally speaking, the superficial causes of migration, only the symptoms or effects of a disease, not the disease itself. More often than not, particularly in such crisis conditions as are prevailing today in the EU, politicians cannot and do not take cognizance of the disease behind the symptoms, i.e. of that which makes political persecution necessary, of the root causes that give rise to conflicts and wars. Much less can they do something about them. They must first, so to speak, quickly suppress the fever. The root causes mostly lie at much deeper levels of reality, and they build up slowly over a long period. They are therefore imperceptible to ordinary people like politicians before they explode onto the surface creating the clearly visible crisis at any particular time.
    To my mind, the root causes of the refugee-migrant crisis can be summed up in the following words: the continuously growing demands, aspirations and ambitions (for short, DAAs) of a continuously growing population, while our resource base is continuously diminishing and the environment continuously degrading. Let me give an extreme example: Asked what he wants to become in future, a boy from a poor family going to an Indian slum school replied he wants to become like Bill Gates. None of his class mates said he wants to become a craftsman; even engine driver was nothing for them. These DAAs go so much beyond the really basic needs of any human being, namely satisfying hunger, quenching thirst, protection from adverse weather, sexual satisfaction, and belonging to a group in society. The continuous growth of DAAs are being propelled by, as it were, autonomously proceeding technological developments, which have their roots in human intelligence and greed, i.e. wanting to have more than one really needs. The catalogue of things the UN declared in 1948 to be universal human rights include "a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing … including food, clothing, housing and medical care, … necessary social services, … the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, … education, … full development of the human personality " etc. (articles 25 and 26). In 1948, even these simple things were totally unrealistic for the greater part of humanity. Moreover, many expressions in this formulation are vague. How much is "adequate"? And what is "wellbeing"? And what is "full development of the human personality"? But this "holy" declaration and pictures and narratives transported by TV etc. from the rich countries of the West to the remotest corners of the undeveloped countries fired the aspirations and ambitions of all poor people of the world.
    Today, 67 years later, in the greater part of the world, they still remain largely unrealized. What is more, the hope that they would be realized in the near future has evaporated. Many scientists and general observers believe that things would become worse – for objective reasons, namely continuous population growth, deepening global ecological crisis, extreme weather events due to global warming, rapid resource depletion, spreading desertification etc. Even in Germany, one of the richest countries of the world, there are many citizens who are homeless; the number of the "working poor" is growing, i.e. they cannot make their living although they work fulltime, which is why they have to apply for social welfare doles.
    In the past, we leftists used to say this kind of poverty exists due to inequitable distribution of the global and/or national income in capitalism, imperialism etc. We also proffered lack of sufficient development or wrong kinds of development as explanation of the misery in the underdeveloped countries. That was and still is largely true. But today we must say that is not the whole story. As Otto Ullrich wrote:

 "... in a system that tries to satisfy needs through material products there will always be, for every attained level of material prosperity, new unsatisfied material basic needs, above all because this system is necessarily very ingenious in the production of new luxury goods, which then become models for new material 'basic needs'. This system will always be too poor … . What was day before yesterday the radio, was yesterday the black-and-white TV, is today the color TV and will tomorrow be the three-dimensional picture projector." (Ullrich 1979: 108).⁴

I agree. As we know, even the socialist system could not satisfy all the "basic needs" of all its citizens in countries where it held sway till 1989.
    Also managers, share holders, and ordinary employees of companies and corporations, even small shop owners, refuse to accept any upper limit to profit/income. Therefore, in globalised capitalism there will always be a prosperity gap. As we know, this gap is continuously growing, not only between the countries, but also within each country, even within the richest ones. We are also seeing a growing discrepancy between the great development promises made in the past by ideologues of both capitalism and cornucopian socialism on the one hand and the gloomy reality of the present and prospects of future catastrophes on the other.
    In middle school I learnt in physics lessons that if two containers standing on the same level contain water under different degrees of pressure, then, if they somehow get connected, water under higher pressure will automatically flow to the container having water under lower pressure. This law of physics can be metaphorically applied to migration of humans (and animals) from densely populated and/or poor countries, where the pressure of poverty is high, to sparsely populated and/or rich countries where poverty is not so acute. Now, we know that the various countries of the world are since long getting ever more connected. After all, we nowadays talk of the world having become a global village.
    If we now multiply the continuously growing DAAs by the continuously growing population in the poorer countries, then we will understand why the universal human rights were, already in 1948, doomed to remain unrealized. They were unrealizable, because also the carrying capacity of this planet has simultaneously and continuously been diminishing – in truth, since human civilization began, albeit very slowly at first. We shall then also understand why migration has been a more or less permanent feature of human history. Capitalism, feudalism, imperialism, inequitable distribution, particular famines, dictatorship, oppression, wars, civil wars, violent conflicts etc. are only superficial or secondary explanations of the phenomenon, sometimes only the immediate causes of particular waves of migration. The real and deeper causes of the permanent phenomenon of migration are what I have stated above. For some individuals, however, who are not really unbearably poor, the lure of greener foreign pastures in the relatively prosperous countries of the West is too great to resist.

Violent Conflicts and Civil Wars

To say that the civil wars in Syria and Iraq have caused the current refugee-migrant crisis is not very original. We also have to know what caused these wars.
    The state of affairs mentioned in the above section toward explaining poverty-related migration has also led, directly or indirectly, to many kinds of violent conflict over distribution of resources – both between nations and within nations. As we know, they too cause people to flee their native country. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait for oil (1991), Morocco's occupation of Western Sahara for phosphate, and the Jewish people's occupation of Palestinian land for founding their state Israel and subsequently for settlements building are some examples from our days.
    Within nations, in most countries, the ruling and dominant class(es), race(s), ethnie(s), regional population(s), religious and language group(s), that presently own (s), rake(s) in or claim(s) the lion's share of the nations resources and national income, must oppress, in one way or another, those below them who feel deprived and demand their fare share: ordinary workers, poor or landless peasants, the unemployed, and the underclass. But why must the former group(s) oppress the latter, who may (or may not) constitute the majority of the population? It is because in the greater part of the world there simply is not enough to satisfy all the demands and wishes of all groups of the nation. In the past we have seen and we are still seeing plenty of conflicts, more or less violent, arising from this state of affairs. So we can say that when some violent conflict appears to be the cause of a particular flow of refugees from a country, it is, in the final analysis, mainly, though not exclusively, the prosperity gap prevailing in that country that is the real and the deeper cause. Of course, cause-and-effect models of explanation are never that simple. Remember Tunisia in 2011? There, after 4 weeks of popular demonstrations the despotic ruler left the country and the matter took a good turn. But not so in Syria.
    It is logical to fear that in future there would be many more such conflicts and they would generate many more streams of refugees – especially if one considers that in the immediate future the on-going ecological and climate crises will further worsen.
    A special phenomenon in this category has been the renaissance of piracy on the high seas. At least Somali pirates said that they were originally fishermen by trade, and that they had no other alternative but to take to piracy when trawlers from distant rich countries began to empty their fishing grounds. At the same time the country's population has been growing at the rate of 3.48% (2002) to 2.81% (2011) per annum. More recent figures are not available or unreliable because of civil war and-large scale emigration. We read in the internet however that in "… 2014 population was estimated at 10.8 million, up from the 2013 estimate of 10 million. The country is rapidly expanding with almost 3% annual population growth and a high fertility rate of 6.26 children per woman, which is the 4th highest in the world." As for the size, Somalia is a very large country. Its population density is just 17.1 per km^2. But it is also a very arid country; arable land is just 1.64% of the whole. We can then imagine how the environmental situation might be. A Somali NGO activist writes: "I was born in 1947 and until I was seven years old I lived in an area that was savannah-like, … I first visited Somalia again about thirty years ago – the land that I had remembered as lush green savannah was total desert, with only huge sandstorms blowing." ⁵ In this and other texts there is also mention of overgrazing, deforestation, and production, even export, of charcoal, which surely contributed to desertification. Another Somali activist writes:

"Environmental issues play a key role in conflicts in Somaliland [the northern province of Somalia]. I would go as far as to say such issues play a daily role in conflict situations across Somaliland. Confrontations frequently occur over disputes over grazing lands, watering holes and land that has been sealed off by individuals for private use."⁵

It is therefore not very meaningful to point only at the foreign trawlers to explain the phenomenon of piracy on Somalia's coast.
    I have shown elsewhere^5a how ecological degradation combined with population growth caused economic troubles, which in turn lent force to the popular revolts against oppressive and exploitative regimes (Egypt, Syria), and which, in Syria, ultimately led to the now over four years old civil war. In the meantime, some more information of this category has been made available by Agnès Sinai.⁶ Sinai, to quote just one example, writes about the rise of Boko Haram in Nigeria:

"In northern Nigeria soil degradation has destroyed the traditional way of life of peasants and cowherds, and impaired the paths of nomads. Several hundred villages have been given up. It resulted in migratory movements that have destabilized the region. In this way the ground was prepared for the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram."

Unfortunately, Sinai failed to point out that, in the meantime, the population of Nigeria has been growing at the annual rate of 2.67% (2000) to 2.47% (2014), a typical omission of most publicists on the subject. Sinai concludes:

"The great crush of refugees at the borders of the prosperity-island of Europe will become stronger in the 21^st century. For, at the time, at least as many people are fleeing the consequences of environmental destruction as from violence and wars."⁶

    In some cases, because in the popular media we hardly get any report on the state of the environment and resource base of the concerned country, it appears that the conflict there is only a power struggle between different religious and/or ethnic groups. Thus, to take another example, the current civil war in Yemen is often being depicted as a war between the Shia Huthis, the minority supported by Iran, and the Sunni majority supported by Saudi Arabia. In reality, however, the Huthis are fighting against the Sunni majority because they are not getting their fair share of power and resources. One also finds in the internet the following information: Between 2000 and 2008, Yemen's population grew at an annual rate of 3.36% to 3.46%. Then the rate started slightly falling. In 2014 the population was still growing at the rate of 2.72%. On the state of the environment we read: "Yemen's main environmental problems have long been scarcity of water, soil erosion, and desertification. Water pollution is a problem due to contaminates from the oil industry, untreated sewage, and salinization. Natural forests in mountainous areas have been destroyed by agricultural clearing and livestock overgrazing."
    This is, however, not to deny that the Shia-Sunni schism that took place in the 7^th century A.D. plays a big role in the current conflicts in the Middle East. But it would probably not cause such severe conflicts if the material conditions of life had not been deteriorating. That may be the reason why in the oil-rich Gulf countries, such as Saudi Arabia – despite the existence of the Shia-Sunni divide – no violent conflict between the two sects has come up. Bahrain is the only exception.
    I do not want to end this section without mentioning the case of Rwanda, where an ethnic conflict led to a genocidal massacre (1994) and ended in a large refugee outflow. Asked why they are killing the others, although both ethnies worship the same Christian God and whose holy scripture demands of them: "… thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself", one participant replied: "In Africa, blood (ethnic loyalty) is thicker (more important) than faith". But that was certainly only the superficial cause. The real and deeper cause was ecological degradation and dwindling resource availability. On Rwanda's environmental situation we read:

“...Rwanda’s mountainous topography and growing human population have resulted in increasingly severe environmental degradation: soil erosion from cultivation of steep slopes; pollution and sedimentation of water sources; and loss of forests, protected areas, and biodiversity to new human settlements.”⁷

On population growth in Rwanda we read: "…the population had increased from 1.5 million in 1930 to 2.1 million in 1952, 3.6 million in 1970, 4.8 million in 1978 and 7.5 million in 1993. Another doubling to 15 million is expected to take place in the next 21 years." ⁸That means, in 1993, the population was growing at the rate of 3.1% per annum. And the population density of Rwanda amounted to 271 inhabitants per square Kilometer.⁸  After the civil war ended, a huge number of Hutus fled to the DR Congo when their ethnic enemies, the Tutsis, conquered power. The greater part of them has still not returned to Rwanda.

The Strength of Identity Feelings

Although defending existing prosperity gaps and/or striving for (more) prosperity are the main reasons why individuals and ruling and dominant groups exploit and oppress the others and the others revolt, there is no denying that on both sides there are people who also enjoy having power itself. So they may also fight for power for the sake of power, i.e. without thereby intending to increase or defend their prosperity. Then also groups not defined purely by economic interests but, e.g., by race, ethnicity, nation, language, religion, sect etc. may do that. All kinds of liberation struggles fall under this category. In reality, however, what one finds in most cases is a contingent mixture of several motivations.
    In the process, a strong group identity, a we-feeling, comes into play. Then the fighters may not (only) be fighting for advancing or defending their economic interests or against usurpers, exploiters or oppressors; they may (also) be hating and/or fighting against the others because they are in some way different. In this way, the oppressed and the exploited of one group may be fighting against the oppressed and the exploited of the others. Thus white racists in the USA and their militant groups (e.g. the Ku Klux Klan) hate, oppress and persecute the blacks not because the latter somehow threaten their economic interests, but because they are different, black. In India, Hindus and Muslims may fight against each other because they worship different gods in different kinds of temples. Similar is the case in Myanmar, where the Rohingyas – who are dark-skinned and are, moreover, Muslims – are hated and persecuted by the fair-skinned and Buddhist Burmese majority. The fight of Al Qaida, IS and Al-Nusra against the West can be understood as the fight of the "faithful" against the "infidels". In this sense, the civil wars in Syria and Iraq can also be declared as a Shia-versus-Sunni conflict. We can then say that many violent conflicts – on-going and of the past – at least partly owe(d) their origin or intensification to non-economic identity conflicts.
    Such conflicts often get fed by historical memories. The Shias cannot forget nor forgive the murder of their religious leader and his followers by the Sunnis in Kerbela in the 7^th century AD. The Hindu-nationalists cannot forget that Hindu kings were defeated by and lost power to Muslim conquerors about one thousand years ago. The struggle of the Islamist Jihadists can also be seen as a process of taking revenge on the imperial West for the humiliations it inflicted upon the Muslims in the past. The Crusades have not been forgotten. That also may be one explanation for the persecution they are meting out to Christians, even Arab Christians. Such conflicts can be triggered off by the slightest provocation. The majority may then think of teaching the others a lesson, which then escalates into a big thing. Conflicts of this kind of origin too have often led to emigration of the underdogs or the defeated.
    Actually, this we versus the others feeling exists also among animals. Think of Chimpanzee groups. They do not allow any stranger from any other group to even approach the borders of their territory. Same is the case with street dog Groups in any Indian City. It belongs to our pristine biological inheritance. The gang wars in Los Angeles take place along borders of clearly divided territories. But in modern times, mostly, any identity group (we-group) is compelled to live in the same state with many other identity groups, thus together forming one mixed population without any group having an exclusive territory of its own. In such cases, identity groups are formed and conflicts break out on other lines, as enumerated above. 
    But in the process of our cultural evolution we humans have learnt to control this primitive feeling, though not fully. Success in controlling it and accepting the others in our community may have been aided by the fact that in advanced societies, human beings generally have more than one identity.⁹ A person can feel e.g. that she is a German and hence different from a Chinese. But she may also feel that she is a capitalist and hence make common cause with Chinese capitalists. So despite differences in nationality, there are international organizations of both capitalists and workers. Thus in the early 1990s, when xenophobic-racist attacks against Vietnamese immigrant workers were taking place in Eastern Germany, visitors from Japan, whom average Germans cannot distinguish from Vietnamese because of their similar looks, were advised to somehow mark themselves as Japanese. It was taken for granted that xenophobic-racist Germans would not attack Japanese visitors because they both belong to the First World.
    Such identity feelings become very strong, highly ingrained, almost indelible when they prove to be the only remaining means of mobilizing the masses against some perceived evil or injustice.¹⁰

Some Concluding Remarks. What can be done?

Since even top politicians and thinkers of the EU and Germany are at their wits' end to solve the crisis, it may be tolerated that I make a few general remarks and suggest some policies.
    The Europeans, particularly Germans, are divided in their sentiments and feelings. The volunteers, the so-called"good people" ("Gutmenschen"), are doing their best to help people in dire need, practicing "a humanitarian culture", "a welcoming culture", and showing a "friendly face". These noble sentiments and practices are invaluable. They show that we can still hope for a future in which all humans will think they belong to one humanity. But there are still many hurdles to overcome and much work to be done to realize such a vision. In the meantime, we cannot ignore the fact that most humans cannot yet jettison their basic animal instincts. Every animal and every animal group tends to defend its territory and other "vital" interests. That is what the so-called "bad people" are doing. The truth is that more than a half of the Germans are afraid they are losing territory, some think, to a foreign "invading" army. But also the "good people" in Germany know, and they are increasingly saying so, that there is a limit to what they and their native country can do, that they cannot help all the poor people of the world.
    This limit is, firstly, a matter of material resources. Captains of the German economy and their representatives in politics and media, but also many standard economists, are saying that the German economy needs about half a million more workers, that the refugee-migrants constitute, so to speak, a demographic dividend, and that they can and should soon be integrated in this aging society. They are expecting a new economic boom as in the 1960s, because the new immigrant-workers would produce new wealth. They are asserting that the immediate costs of integrating them would be manageable, that, after all, Germany could bear the costs of integrating the whole population (17 million) of the former GDR etc.
    This is utter nonsense; nothing can be more misleading. They are talking as if they have never heard of the climate crisis, the general ecological crisis, and the contradiction between ecology and economy. Moreover, they are not mentioning that the East Germans did not come to join West Germany empty-handed like the refugee-migrants of today, that they brought along their fertile land, buildings, highly developed infrastructure and advanced knowledge and know-how of the people. Particularly Germans in the lower strata of society are fearing more intensive competition for low level jobs and affordable rented accommodation. Captains of industry are already demanding that exceptions to the minimum wage law be allowed.
    Secondly, even for modern humans living in an era of globalization there is a psychological limit to tolerance of foreigners in their forecourt. It is not for nothing that radical rightist parties are gaining ground in all EU countries. And thirdly, social scientists know that, in many areas of life, there is also a "social-critical limit", after crossing which a social organization begins malfunctioning. Today, the EU seems to have crossed several such limits.
    All these have led to tensions between the member nations of the EU as well as cracks within some of them, even within parties. Recently, Marine Le Pen, leader of the French radical rightist party Front National, characterized the liberal German policy on the current refugee-migrant crisis as a project to recruit cheap slave labor for the country's economy. Some time back, a Greek woman asked some young male Syrian refugee-migrants: "Why don't you go back and fight against the IS at home?" The foreign affairs minister of the newly elected Polish government recently asked a German TV reporter (in the general sense): Do you think we should send our soldiers to Syria while young men from there let themselves be housed and fed by Germans and drink coffee in a Berlin restaurant? The East-European member states of the EU have totally refused to accept any refugee in their country. The Hungarian Prime Minister said bluntly: "It is not our problem. It is the problem of the Germans."
    I leave it to the politicians and administrators of the EU and Germany to define their immediate tasks and perform them. It is they who have competence in that area. But I know what must and should be done in the middle and long term: (a) help stop population growth where it is still growing, (b) tell people, also in the rich countries, to curtail their material aspirations and consumption desires, (c) regulate capitalism, if you do not want to overthrow it, and control international trade and investment in order to force capitalists to act in socially and ecologically responsible manner, and (d) start, already now, a publicity campaign for these long-term goals and corresponding policies.
    Recently, the EU leaders have shown readiness to give African countries more financial aid in order to enable them to motivate their young citizens to stay in their native country. This is a commendable idea. But, firstly, the purpose of this aid should not be to bribe the leaders of the concerned countries and demand in exchange that they somehow hold back the would-be migrants. The aid should be used to reduce the prosperity gap, which can also be achieved by reducing the consumption level of e.g. the Germans. As long as the present huge gap remains, no amount of aid to poor African countries will help stop migration to Europe. The youth of Africa and other poor countries do not just want to have enough to eat. They also want to have the good things of life. Secondly, at least this new aid should be given with a condition attached, namely that it should be used for programs to stop further population growth. And finally, the people of the rich countries must give up their policy of extracting as much profit as possible from the poor countries. An African refugee-migrant told European journalists: "We are here because you are (were) in our countries"
     Let me stop here for today. Those who are more interested in this line of thinking may read my book Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? – A Critical Analysis of Humanity's Fundamental Choices¹¹, in which I have thoroughly discussed many of these and other related issues. It also appeared in German translation.¹²

Notes:

If not otherwise stated, statistical and other data are from the internet.

1. The March is a movie that was aired by BBC One for "One World Week" in 1990. The plot concerns a charismatic Muslim leader from the Sudan who leads 250,000 Africans on a 3,000 miles (4,800 km) march towards Europe
with the slogan, "We are poor because you are rich."

The story is about an indefinite future in which, due to climate change, large parts of Africa have become uninhabitable and in Europe racial tensions have increased. What was in those days thought to be the future scenario has today unexpectedly become reality (Source for both passages:Wikipedia)
 2. Twenty years ago, on 8 August 1991, several ships carrying approximately 15,000 Albanian migrants succeeded in entering the port of Bari, Italy. The Italian government’s response was harsh.  Most of the Albanians were detained in a sports stadium without adequate food, water, or access to bathrooms.  Italian authorities dropped supplies to the detained migrants by helicopter.  Within several weeks most of the migrants were deported to Albania.  Their harsh treatment was criticised by human rights organisations and the Pope, but was justified by the Italian government as necessary to deter further irregular migration from Albania. (Source Wikipedia)

3.Ceuta und Melilla: Europas Hightech-Festung in Afrika
Von Katharina Graça Peters

"The distance between Poverty and a new start is only a few meters: The Spanish exclaves Ceuta and Melilla are parts of Europe, but they are situated in Africa. Ever since, six years ago, refugees stormed the fences in large numbers, the two cities have shielded themselves off more strongly by means of high-tech equipment." (Source Wikipedia)
 ^{http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/ceuta-und-melilla-europas-hightech-festung-in-afrika-a-778304.html}
4. Ullrich, Otto (1979) Weltniveau – In der Sackgasse des Industriesystems. Berlin: Rotbuch.

5. Bandare, Shukhri Haji Ismail and Jibrell, Fatima (2015) "Women, Conflict and the Environment in Somali Society". In
Hawley, Jenny (ed.) (2015)Why Women Will Save the Planet. London: Zed Books. PP. 141, 144.

5a.Sarkar, Saral: The Tragedy of Lampedusa – What to Do?
http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/2013/10/the-tragedy-of-lampedusa-what-to-do.html

6. Sinai, Agnès: "Verwüstung. – Wie der Klimawandel  Konflikte anheizt." In: Le Monde Diplomatiqe. September 2015. (This journal also has an English edition).

7. Thaxton, Melissa (february 2009) Integrating Population, Health, and Environment in Rwanda (Source Wikipedia)
http://www.prb.org/pdf09/phe-rwanda.pdf )

8. Diessenbacher, Hartmut (1998) Kriege der Zukunft – Die Bevölkerungsexplosion gefährdet den Frieden. Munich & Vienna: Carl Hanser. Pp 67-68.

9. See: Sen, Amartya (2006) Identity and Violence – The Illusion of Destiny. London: Penguin (Allen Lane)

10. See: Sarkar, Saral (2012)"The Power of the Religions and the Helplessness of the Leftists"
http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/2012/08/the-power-of-religions-and-helplessness.html

11.Sarkar, Saral (1999) Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? – A Critical Analysis of Humanity's Fundamental Choices. London: Zed Books.

12. Sarkar, Saral (2001) Die Nachhaltige Gesellschaft – Eine kritische Analyse der Systemalternativen. Zürich: Rotpunkt (vergriffen), and Saarbrücken: SVH (as book on demand).

The Environment of India's Silicon Valley Capital Bangalore - a few pictures

2.10.2015

Dear friends,

On Mahatma Gandhi's birthday anniversary, I would not write too much. Just a quote. He wrote in 1928:

"The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom [Britain] is keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts."

And, in a sort of corroboration, I offer a few pictures of India's Silicon Valley capital Bangalore. This is only a part of the price a Third World country pays for getting richer and getting more populous simultaneously. India's current population is roughly 1.3 billion.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2015/oct/01/lake-toxic-foam-bangalore-india-in-pictures.

Saral

Root Causes of the Cleavages in the Ecological Left

Some time back, a political friend, who understands himself as an eco-anarchist but also sympathizes with eco-socialism, had a controversial discussion with an activist, who understands himself as an eco-socialist, on the question of the cleavages in the ecological left. My eco-anarchist friend requested me and some others to respond to the controversial discussion, which I gladly did because I thought at least the root causes of the cleavages must be understood if the latter cannot be overcome at present.
    They did not want me to give the links to their own original contributions written in the form of letters, arguing that they did not write them with sufficient care.
    I am publishing below my response to the controversy, putting down only a few points that are more important and ignoring the less important ones. The reader will easily understand which points made by the others I am referring to. They are colored red.

----------------------------------------------------------

    There indeed are some cleavages in, generally speaking, the ecological left movement. That does not necessarily mean that any group is sectarian. The differences are genuine and they might be overcome through further thinking, reading, discussion, and joint activities. I have identified four root causes of the cleavages.

1. The Energy Question

I think the most primary root cause of the cleavages lies in different understandings of the energy problematique. If one is an optimist, if one believes like Ongerth that 100% renewables is not only achievable, but it’s also EASILY achievable, then why should one at all object to further economic growth and advocate a steady-state economy as Ongerth and his anarchist and socialist friends do? After all, then there would be no CO₂ emission any more, and if some are allowed for any reason, that would be reabsorbed soon, would not hang on in the atmosphere. Then the problem of global warming would not exist any more! Then there would not be any environmental pollution at all, for, with cheap and abundant renewable energy, any waste can be easily recycled. Hermann Scheer, until his death the high priest of solar energy in Europe, wrote:

“For an inconceivably long time the sun will donate its energy to humans, animals, and plants. And it will do that so lavishly that it could satisfy even the most sumptuous energy needs of the worlds of humans, animals and plants experiencing drastic growth: [for] the sun supplies every year 15,000 times more energy than what the world population commercially consumes … .” (Scheer 1999: 66)¹

    Then the resource problem would also be solved! Then we can get by without extracting a single molecule more. And we can then even have further economic growth (why remain stuck up in steady state at the present level?). Then why shouldn't all the poor people of the world also enjoy each, individually, a swimming pool, a sailboat, skis, a big house and other wasteful luxuries? Why not for all at least a car powered by renewable energy? Or powered by electricity drawn from hydrogen fuel cells? (If they want to use a car collectively, then not because it would not be possible to own and use a car individually and without damaging the environment!).
    But if the optimism of Ongerth, Scheer etc. are unfounded, then we must soon begin the process of economic contraction (one can call it so if one does not like the term de-growth because of its alleged association with reactionaries and white-supremacists.) Then, and only then, is an egalitarian or socialist policy the best way to achieve that contraction for the sake of saving the planet. And that is the compelling new argument for socialism in the 21^st century. I hope Ongerth and his optimist friends will now notice the inner contradiction in their position.
    I think this optimism is based on nothing but so many illusions and misinformation. Ongerth has read one dozen books and 1000 articles on this subject. So may I suggest that he reads only a few more? : Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's book The entropy Law and the Economic Process,² especially his 1978 article, a very short one: "Technology Assessment: The Case of the Direct Use of Solar Energy".³ My own effort to understand and present the problematique is contained in my book Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism?⁴ (Ch. 4, PP. 102 –139). The latest of my efforts to present the problem is contained in: "Krugman's Illusion: We Becoming Richer, But Not Damaging the Environment"⁵:
    Very important is to understand the following: (1) the difference between feasible and viable, (2) the entropy law⁶, (3) the difference between price (money cost) and energy cost, (4) the difference between energy production technologies and all other kinds of technologies, (5) the difference between gross energy and net energy (AKA energy balance, EROEI, and energy pay-back time).
    Examples and explanations of the above differences are given below: (1) It is feasible to put a few humans on the moon, but it is not viable to maintain a human colony there because of the enormous costs in terms of energy and materials. (2) The entropy law makes it impossible to recycle all waste. (3) The price (money cost) of solar cells (at the market) may fall for many reasons, but the energy cost thereof may rise at the same time. (4) When we want to fly by an airplane or have light in the evening, we may be prepared to pay any price (also in energy terms) for the flight/light. But if we want to produce energy (e.g. by using solar cells), then it does not make sense to incur more energy cost for manufacturing all the required equipment (by using energy from coal and oil which we are doing till today) than the total amount of energy produced. (5) It is at least very doubtful that the net energy coming from solar, wind and some other renewable energy technologies is high enough to maintain the industrial society as we know it. We cannot save the planet without drastically reducing our present standard of living. We only do not know by how much we must reduce it. Saving the planet should be our top priority, for our own sake, and not saving the average standard of living of First World workers.
    It is wrong to argue, as Ted Trainer does, that renewables are likely to be unaffordable to run energy-intensive growth-capitalist-consumer society because of unaffordable capital costs required to maintain a constant energy supply using intermittent sources. That may at best be a secondary or tertiary argument. The transition from the energy system of the 17^th and 18^th centuries based on renewables (wood, fodder for draught animals, sundry biomass, wind and water mills) to the energy system based mainly on fossil fuels (plus a little hydropower) also involved enormous capital costs. Mankind could afford that, first the rich countries, then also the Third World countries. It of course took a long time and a lot of sacrifice to accumulate the necessary amount of capital, but it could be done. The question that must be answered now is why we (both Ted and I) think that this time the capital costs involved in the transition from today's energy system mainly based on fossil fuels to an energy system based wholly on renewable energies should be unaffordable. The answer lies in the concept of energy density (or energy content) and not so much on intermittency of the renewables. One Kilogram of coal or oil contains many times more energy than the same amount of wood etc. (for details of the argumentation see my 1999 book.) From the first named transition (from the renewables to the fossil sources), mankind came out richer. From the increased wealth, our forefathers could accumulate enough capital for completing the transition. But this time, from the transition from the fossil sources to the renewables (if that at all takes place, for which I am not seeing sufficient signs), mankind would come out poorer. That is why mankind would not be able to accumulate enough capital to build the second generation of renewable power plants that would have to be built as replacement for the worn out first generation thereof. But why should mankind come out poorer from the second named transition, should it take place?
    There has been a lot of dispute about the exact EROEI (or net energy or energy pay back time) of solar electricity, wind electricity etc. at different places and under different conditions. But nobody has till now asserted that e.g. one unit of sunshine (say, on one square meter of the earth's surface) contains as much or more energy than, say, one Kilogram of bituminous coal. Even a lay person perceives and knows that coal and oil are already highly concentrated solar energy, concentrated and stored by nature over several millions of years, whereas sunshine reaches the surface of the earth in weak and diffuse form and must first be collected and concentrated by us before we can use it as electricity. It is therefore easier and much less costly to collect and use fossil fuels than sunshine and wind. This common sense led India and China – both rich in sunshine and wind – to mainly use fossil fuels for energy rather than sunshine and wind. India has recently decided to double its coal production in the next five years.

2. Scientific and Technological progress

The second root cause of the cleavages lies in our expectations from science and technology. Almost all optimists (both socialists and pro-capitalists) believe that it is only a matter of a few decades more when 100% renewables will be achieved. Haven't we succeeded in overcoming gravity? Are we not talking with persons who live 20 000 miles away? Or think of the computer and internet! Particularly the computer has been cited by the optimists again and again. I saw the first IBM computers in the mid 1970s – three big cupboards and a one meter long key-board for punching holes in cards. After only ten years, I saw small table-top PCs in every office. In another five years, PCs had become so cheap that I could see, in Germany, a PC in almost every household. If all that has become possible, why shouldn't 100% renewables be possible?
    It is true, these achievements appear like miracles. Yet I am quite skeptical about 100% renewables. Flying by an airplane, landing on the moon, telephoning a friend who lives 20.000 miles away, computers etc. – all these achievements were possible only after we discovered and started using the fossil fuels, their immense amount of concentrated energy. But even these energy sources are going to be exhausted or become unaffordable, sooner or later. And their use must also be drastically curtailed for stopping further global warming.
    But, as Georgescu-Roegen (1978) argued, manufacture of all equipment from A to Z involved in generating renewable energies (from earth removers and foundry equipment to silicon wafers, rotors, turbines, reinforced concrete towers of windmills, copper wires etc. etc. etc.) require expenditure of large amounts of fossil fuels. That means, renewable energy technologies will only exist as long as fossil fuels remain cheap and abundant. That is, the former are parasites of the latter. ⁷
    In my youth, in the early fifties, I too was an optimist. I accepted the hope shared by many that progress in science and technology will one day also enable us to make the Sahara bloom, that nuclear energy will make electricity so cheap and abundant that it would not be worth the trouble to measure its consumption in individual households. Only much later did I realize that there are several things that are, of course, feasible but are not viable on a large scale. Thus I saw the first solar panel pumping water in the mid 1970s. Forty years later, today, unlike the computer, solar electricity still has not been able to make a breakthrough. It still needs state subsidies of various kinds.

3. The Population Problem

The third root cause of the cleavages lies in our respective stances on the population question. However much one may denigrate Malthus, Garret Hardin and Paul Ehrlich as reactionaries and anti-communists, the fact remains that a certain quantity of national (or world) income divided by a population of, say, 2 millions will yield half as much income per capita as when it is divided by a population of one million. This is true in any society, in a capitalist one or in a classless socialist one. Moreover, the allergic reaction of most leftists in North America and other rich or huge but sparsely populated countries to the population issue shows that they have not understood at all what ecology is about. Ecology is the study of the relation of a population to the (natural) resources available in its habitat. I am a socialist from my school days and I have lived in India for 46 years (current population 1.26 billion). Malthus was my first ecology teacher. From Paul Ehrlich I learnt, "Whatever your cause, it is a lost cause unless we control population [growth].".⁸ The more India and China (current population 1.4 billion) try to improve the standard of living of their populace, the more they degrade their environment. There indeed is a fundamental contradiction between ecology and economy, and not just between ecology and capitalism (what Marx, Marxists and old leftists have been trying to make us believe). If Ongerth is prepared to read another article, I would recommend him the following one of mine: "Polemics is Useless  – A Proposal For An Eco-socialist Synthesis In The Overpopulation Dispute.⁹

4. The Agency Question

The fourth root cause lies in the question of faith or lack thereof in the revolutionary role of the working class. You know what Marx expected from the working class: that the workers of the whole world would unite for making the revolution. He thought they had nothing to lose but their chains, that they had no fatherland etc. etc. But already by 1914, on the eve of the First World War, these expectations proved to be utterly baseless. The workers of Europe could not unite, they showed that they were divided, and each group had a fatherland. They killed each other en masse. And already a decade or two earlier, The party of German workers, the SPD, had said that Germans as a Kulturvolk (people with culture) must also have colonies.¹⁰
    If one asks me who then would change the world, I cannot give a clear answer, but a vague answer might be what Erich Fromm said. Fromm said, in regard to this question, he recognized only two camps among humans, namely "those who care and those who don’t care".¹¹. I think my provisional and very vague answer would be: those who are concerned about the state of the world must take up this responsibility. They may come from any class, nation, race, religious group etc.
    Since I count all leftists (also a vague term) and environmentalists among those who are concerned, I would call upon them to unite on the basis of whatever agreements today exist and start the work of changing the world. We may at the same time continue to discuss our differences on analysis, goals and strategy in order to come to further agreements.

Notes:

1. Scheer, Herrmann (1999) Solare Weltwirtschaft – Strategie für die ökologische Moderne. Munich.

2. Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas (1971/1981) The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Cambridge. MA.

3. Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas (1978) »Technology Assessment: The Case of the Direct Use of Solar Energy«. In: Atlantic Economic Journal, December 1978.

4. Sarkar, Saral (1999 ) Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? London.

5. Sarkar, Saral (2014) "Krugman's Illusion: We Becoming Richer, But Not Damaging the Environment":
http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/2014/04/krugmans-illusion-we-becoming-richer.html

6. There is a short presentation thereof in
Sarkar, Saral (2012) The Crises of Capitalism. Berkeley. PP. 286–290.

7. See Georgescu-Roegen (note 3).

8. Ehrlich, Paul, quoted in Weissman, Steve (1971) "Foreward", in
Meek, Ronald L. (ed.) (1971) Marx and Engels on the Population Bomb. Berkeley.

9. Sarkar, Saral (2012)
http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/2012/08/polemics-is-useless-proposal-for-eco.html

10. See Mandelbaum, Kurt (1974) Sozialdemokratie und Leninismus. Berlin.

11. Fromm, Erich (1982) To Have or To Be. London. P. 191.