Dr Baer, from the
University of Melbourne’s School of Political and Social Sciences, is clearly
unhappy with capitalism and its neoliberalism aberrations.
Those who attend economic
and climate change-related public
lectures would undoubtedly be familiar with the most awkward question of the
session coming from Dr Baer.
Here he has considered three books – “Collision Course. Endless
Growth on a Finite Planet” by Kerryn Higgs; “Why are we Waiting? The Logic,
Urgency, and Promise of Tackling Climate Change” by Nicholas Stern; and “Climate
Shock. The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planer” by Gernot Wagner and
Martin L. Weitzman.
In conclusion, he says:
“Indeed, various scholars and social activists around the world have
come to the recognition that the existing global economy or the capitalist
world system has to be jettisoned in order to develop an alternative world
system based upon social parity and justice, democratic processes,
environmental sustainability, and a safe climate. In contrast to Stern and Wagner
and Weitzman, Higgs’s suggests that humanity faces the imperative of moving beyond
the growth paradigm. In my view, it is hard to see how we can expect the system
that created the problems of social inequality, environmental degradation, and
climate change to find meaningful solutions for them. Anthropologists are well
aware that social systems, whether local, regional, or global, do not last
forever. Global capitalism has been around for some 500 years but it has so many
inherent contradictions that ultimately it must be transcended if humanity and life
on the planet are going to survive in some sustainable fashion. Achieving such
a world will not be easy, especially given the failures of earlier efforts to
create more equitable and just social systems, particularly the Soviet Union
and the People’s Republic of China. Whereas the former collapsed in 1991, the
latter has embraced the growth paradigm and much of the neoliberal agenda and
has been transformed into what some scholars characterize as a variant of state
capitalism. While global capitalism is a well-entrenched system with support
from many sides, there are voices against this massive global system from many quarters,
including the anti-corporate globalization, environmental, climate, labour,
women’s, and indigenous rights movements, as well as socialists, anarchists, and
even left-liberals and social democrats.
Indeed, a distinct climate justice movement has crystalized
over the past decade or so that has built upon warnings about the dangers of
climate change emanating over the past 20–25 years from climate scientists,
environmental groups, and indigenous groups, particularly those in the Arctic and
South Pacific. Climate justice activists call for “system change, not climate
change.”
In the past, Marxian political economy has tended to give at best
passing consideration to the limits to growth and the ecological crisis. Over
the past three decades or so, various leftist groups have become more sensitive
to the environmental travesties that have occurred in developed and developing societies.
Eco-socialism or eco-Marxism seeks to come to grips with the growth paradigm
inherent in capitalism to which post-revolutionary societies also subscribed.
The notion of “socialism for the twenty-first century” has emerged under the
guise of the Bolivarian Revolution in Latin America and to some extent, with
mixed and contradictory results to date, has embraced eco-socialist principles
as a strategy for mitigating climate change and sustaining the planet.
Ultimately, the bigger question is how humanity will move from the existing global
economy – one committed to growth while claiming increasingly that it can
decouple economic growth from environmental degradation and GHG emissions – to
one that creates an even playing field in terms of access to natural resources and
is based upon environmental sustainability.”
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