Ecosocialist Bookshelf, May 2024 / by Ian Angus

_{^{Via Climate & Capitalism}}

_{Reposted from Climate & Capitalism}

_{Ecosocialist Bookshelf is a monthly column, hosted by Ian Angus. Books described here may be reviewed at length in future. Inclusion of a book does not imply endorsement, or that C&C agrees with everything (or even anything!) it says. Climate & Capitalism has received review copies of some of these books, but we do not receive any payment for reviews or for reader purchases.}

Domitila Barrios de Chungara and Moema Viezzer
LET ME SPEAK!
Testimony of Domitila, A Woman of the Bolivian Mines
Monthly Review Press
First published in English in 1978, Let Me Speak! is the story of a valiant fighter for indigenous and workers’ rights in the mines of Bolivia. The new edition includes never-before-translated testimonies, resulting in a fuller picture of both Chungara’s activity, including her role in bringing down the Banzer dictatorship, and her internationalist workduring her exile in Sweden.

Michael Löwy
ROSA LUXEMBURG
The Incendiary Spark
Haymarket Books
In ten insightful essays, noted ecosocialist scholar Löwy explores Luxemburg’s many political and theoretical contributions, as well as her links to other revolutionaries including Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukács, José Carlos Mariátegui, and Leon Trotsky, always bearing in mind her enduring relevance to today’s struggles against oppression.

Daniel Tanuro
ÉCOLOGIE, LUTTES SOCIALES ET RÉVOLUTION
La Dispute
Dans ce livre d’entretiens, Daniel Tanuro, ingénieur agronome et militant écosocialiste, propose un diagnostic limpide, des analyses tranchantes et des propositions radicales en vue d’une révolution écologique et sociale. Cette introduction à l’écologie et au marxisme contemporains rend accessible et prolonge les réflexions de l’auteur sur l’impossibilité d’un capitalisme vert et sur la stratégie pour une écologie à la hauteur des défis du temps présent.

Marco D’Eramo
MASTERS
The Invisible War of the Powerful Against Their Subjects
Polity Books
Our rulers have carried out a stealth revolution, using every weapon from information technology to debt. They have changed the nature of power, from discipline to control. They have learned from the workers’ struggle, using Gramsci and Lenin against us. Can we learn from our opponents and launch a successful counter-offensive?

Steven W. Thrasher
THE VIRAL UNDERCLASS
The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide
Celadon Books
The ways in which viruses spread, kill, and take their toll are much more dependent on social structures than they are on biology alone. Thrasher delves into the viral underclass and lays bare its inner workings, helping us understand the world more deeply by showing the fraught relationship between privilege and survival.

Thomas Shevory
TOXIC LAKE
Environmental Destruction and the Epic Fight to Save Onondaga Lake
New York University Press
For indigenous people Onondaga Lake is a sacred place, where peace between nations was achieved and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy was created. In the 20th century it acquired a wholly different reputation as “the most polluted lake in America.” Shevory tracks the history of this complex ecological system, and the fight against a system that privileges industrial polluters over human rights.

Oneka LaBennett
GLOBAL GUYANA
Shaping Race, Gender, and Environment in the Caribbean and Beyond
New York University Press
Previously one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries, Guyana is becoming a global leader in oil production. LaBennett illuminates how oil extraction and sand export are implicated in the pillaging the Caribbean’s natural resources while masking the ecological consequences that disproportionately affect women and children, and sounds an alarm about the looming threat of environmental calamity.

Augustín Lage Dávila
THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY AND SOCIALISM
Science and Society in Cuba
Monthly Review Press
Despite the imperialist blockade, Cuba is a global leader in the development and application of scientific knowledge and products, from vaccines and medicines to organic food. Noted Cuban immunologist, Dr. Augustín Lage Dávila shows how Cuba achieved this, arguing that the training of scientists and their relationships with the Cuban people are intimately connected to the country’s revolutionary socialist culture.

Michael Albert
NAVIGATING THE POLYCRISIS
Mapping the Futures of Capitalism and the Earth
MIT Press
In view of the “planetary polycrisis” that is disrupting global capitalism, Albert argues that we must devote more attention to the study of possible futures. He offers a theoretical framework — planetary systems thinking — that is incorporates complexity theory, world-systems theory, and aspects of ecological Marxism, as a basis for considering how egalitarian transitions beyond capitalism might occur.

_{Ian Angus is a socialist and ecosocialist activist in Canada. He is editor of the ecosocialist journal Climate & Capitalism. He is co-author, with Simon Butler, of Too Many People? Population, Immigration and the Environmental Crisis (Haymarket, 2011), editor of the anthology The Global Fight for Climate Justice (Fernwood, 2010); and author of Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System (Monthly Review Press, 2016). His latest book is A Redder Shade of Green: Intersections of Science and Socialism (Monthly Review Press, 2017).}

“Just Energy Partnerships” Are Failing / by Sean Sweeney

_{^{Wind turbines operate next to an informal squatter camp on June 6, 2023, in Gouda, South Africa. (Per-Anders Pettersson / Getty Images)}}

The recent post-COP26 rollout of “just energy partnerships” to finance poor countries’ turn away from fossil fuels has been widely touted as a way for wealthy countries to fund the green transition. The only problem: they aren’t working.

_{Reposted from Jacobin}

In the complicated world of “climate finance,” the Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) have been presented as the best thing since beluga caviar. The designers and advocates of the JETPs say that they represent a “new financing paradigm,” and “a template on how to support just transition around the world.”

It all started (ostensibly) at the United Nations (UN) climate talks (COP26) in Glasgow in November 2021, when the first JETP between rich countries (represented by “International Partners Group,” or IPG) and South Africa was unveiled. Six months later, in June 2022, G7 leaders stated that more JETPs were in the pipeline, involving Indonesia and Vietnam. In November 2022, Egypt joined the JETP group, and Senegal signed on in June 2023. JETPs involving Côte d’Ivoire, Colombia, India, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and the Philippines are apparently under discussion.

In each instance, the goal of the JETP is to “mobilize” finance in the form of both concessional and commercial loans (explained below) to help Global South countries either move away from coal and/or accelerate the deployment of renewable energy in ways that are socially just. For some, the finance committed under the first JETPs — $8.5 billion to South Africa, $15.5 billion to Vietnam, and $20 billion to Indonesia — indicates that rich countries are, after years of vague promises, finally beginning to meet their obligation under the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to “provide financial resources to assist developing country Parties in implementing the objectives of the UNFCCC.”

The fact that private financial interests have pledged to partner with governments on developing and implementing the JETPs has added political weight to the effort to present the JETPs as a model for financing the transition. At COP26, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), a coalition of 550 corporations worth $130 trillion, declared its readiness to assist the JETPs with financing and expertise as part of “the transformation of the global economy for net zero.”

Don’t Criticize It

JETPs have been generally well received by North-based environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), liberal policy groups, and some unions. In 2022, at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, then International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) general secretary Sharan Burrow praised South Africa’s JETP deliberations as “a model that should be emulated everywhere” because unions had been given “a seat at the table.”⁹ The Overseas Development Institute stated, “There is currently no other mechanism which would unlock the scale of international [development] finance needed to retire South Africa’s multiple coal-fired power plants, reskill fossil fuel workers and support local economic development in coal mining regions.”

But support for JETPs, while frequently tentative and provisional, is misplaced, for several reasons.

First, while JETPs are expected to lead to an “accelerated decarbonization of large emissions-intensive middle-income countries,” they are unlikely to reduce coal use significantly. Global coal use is today at its highest point in history and is the largest single source of CO2 emissions. Reducing coal use would likely yield climate benefits, but the three main JETP countries — South Africa, Indonesia, and Vietnam — together account for just 4.3 percent of global annual coal consumption, whereas just two of the IPG countries, Germany and the United States, together account for 11.5 percent. If the rich countries really want to reduce global coal use, they should stop shipping it abroad. Australia exports 80 percent of its coal, mostly to India, Japan, and Korea. The United States, too, is a major exporter. In 2022, the United States exported about 80 million metric tons of coal — equal to about 14 percent of US coal production. The United States is ranked fourth-largest exporter behind Indonesia, Australia, and Russia.

Legitimize to Privatize

Second, the just transition dimension of the JETPs lacks substance. International labor had helped ensure that the principle of just transition was in the Paris Agreement, and in South Africa and Indonesia, unions and civil society groups were invited to participate in discussions on their implementation. However, a seat at the table could hardly stop the push toward energy privatization. In South Africa, for instance, in early February 2019, almost three years before the JETP was announced, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared that his government would “lead a process with labor, Eskom [the public electricity utility] and other stakeholders to work out the details of a just transition.” However, in the very same speech, Ramaphosa announced the breakup, or “unbundling,” of Eskom, “to raise funding for its various operations much easily [sic] from funders and the market.”

Aware that unbundling is normally step one in the process of World Bank–driven privatization, unions opposed the government’s decision, and continue to do so. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) called for the cancelation of power purchase agreements with private wind and solar companies that, they said, were costing Eskom ZAR93 million (roughly $5.2 million) a day. South Africa’s labor movement has urged Ramaphosa to consider an alternative approach, one that allows Eskom to become a renewable energy producer.

But union objections were brushed aside. Keen to support Ramaphosa, the IPG made the $8.5 billion in the JETP, contingent upon the creation of “an enabling environment through policy reform of the electricity sector, such as unbundling [of the public utility, Eskom].”

In Indonesia, in a similar union-led battle against privatization, energy unions successfully appealed to the country’s Constitutional Court in 2016 to halt the expansion of privately owned electricity companies (independent power producers, or IPPs) in the country’s electricity sector. Unions argued that the expansion of the IPPs violated Article 33 of the country’s constitution, which ensured that energy and other vital services would remain controlled by the Indonesian state. The court agreed, but the government was not about to give up. A 2020 omnibus law endorsed the presence of private and cooperative energy producers alongside the state-owned power utility, PLN (Perusahaan Listrik Negara). The language in the law was innocuous enough, but the implications of the law were anything but.

Following the announcement of the IPG-GFANZ JETP deal with Indonesia, unions were invited to provide input. As with South Africa, the JETP itself was not on the table for discussion and neither was the push for energy privatization; rather, the labor movement was described as the “stakeholder” that “monitors and ensures that the JETP implementation abides by the principles of just transition.”

All Dressed Up

Athird reason for being skeptical about the JETPs concerns the actual status of financing. Despite the hype, financing for the first tranche of JETPs is still nowhere to be seen.

Several reports have attempted to explain this. One pointed to the “lack of follow through” from both IPG and “host countries” which “risks souring the spirit of cooperation.” The Financial Times cites “a lack of consistent support from multilateral development banks (MDBs) and the premature announcement of deals by political leaders before funding had been secured.”

It is therefore tempting to dismiss the JETPs as another sign of rich-country indifference and stinginess. Alternatively, a Brookings Institute paper describes it as “forces within both labor and business who are attached to the old carbon economy.” Either way, JETPs have been all dressed up but, in the end, might have nowhere to go.

In the Blender

But neither of these explanations fully account for what is happening (or not) with the JETPs. For this, a deeper analysis of climate finance is required.

Under the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” adopted in the early 1990s negotiations around the UNFCCC, rich countries accepted “the urgent need to enhance the provision of finance, technology and capacity-building support” from the North to the developing South. This clear obligation was subsequently reworded, although not officially. Instead of providing finance, rich countries began to talk about providing access to finance — which is a different proposition altogether. This not-so-subtle shift became visible in late 2009 at COP15 in Copenhagen, when US secretary of state Hillary Clinton announced that rich countries were going to jointly “mobilize” $100 billion a year by 2020 from “a wide variety of sources, public and private.” In other words, rich countries did not want climate finance to become an extension of “overseas development assistance” (with a heavy emphasis on grants); they wanted it to take the form of loans.

By the time the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, it was clear that climate finance flowing from North to South was so minimal that it was becoming a diplomatic embarrassment for the rich countries. The World Bank pivoted toward using development loans to spur additional private investment — so-called blended finance — to reach both climate and sustainable development goals. Billions of dollars of development finance would, the Bank believed, “unlock” trillions of dollars from private investors.

Crunched by Numbers

It is this “billions to trillions” blended finance model that lies at the heart of the JETPs. It mixes commercial loans (issued at market rate), “concessional” financing, and grants. Concessional loans offer below-market interest rates, and sometimes grace periods where the borrower is not required to make debt payments for several years — a form of “JETP discount.” Mix these two forms of financing together and, voilà — stand by for the great unlocking of private investment. The local elites in South Africa and Indonesia believe in this model and have embraced the JETPs with as much enthusiasm as the rich countries.

But at COP26 in Glasgow, six years after Billons to Trillions was launched, a UN-commissioned study revealed that the flow of money was considerably below $100 billion per year and — revealingly — for every $4 committed by development banks, less than $1 was added by the private investors.³¹

In 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) calculated that “emerging and developing economies” (EMDEs) account for “two-thirds of the world’s population but only one-fifth of investment in clean energy” due to “persistent challenges in mobilizing finance.” But these “persistent challenges” boil down to one thing: not enough profit. In the words of one analyst, “For any private sector actor, the investment climate is critical. . . . Often, as we know, in low-income countries the risk profiles versus the returns just aren’t there.”

This explains why the JETPs are languishing. From the perspective of private investors, on a project-by-project basis, the levels of profit must be comparable to returns on investments that they make in the Global North. Why incur more project risk when there are less risky investment opportunities in the rich countries?

The World Bank, and now the IPG and GFANZ, hope that concessional loans might make clean energy projects more “bankable,” but the evidence suggests that the gap between profit levels in the North and those in the South is frequently far too wide. In other words, the “enabling environment” is unlikely be enabling enough. This likely explains why the MDBs have also been reluctant to turn pledges into cash, because without the private sector stepping up, the MDBs know that already indebted developing countries will struggle to carry the financial burden of the transition on their own balance sheets.

Catalyze How?

As originally conceived, climate finance was intended to help settle the North’s ecological debt to the South, not add more financial debt to their balance sheets. In Indonesia’s case, roughly 20 percent of the $20 billion financing is expected to take the form of commercial loans and around 70 percent in concessional loans. But even cheap loans must be paid back, with interest. Commenting on the JETP with Indonesia at COP28 in Dubai, Jakarta-based Tiza Mafira from the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) noted, “Concessional loans will need to be channeled via MDBs, and MDBs will require sovereign guarantees, and so Indonesia may have to set aside $8.4 billion in sovereign guarantees in order to access those concessional loans [in the JETP].”

However, in South Africa’s case, no less than 80 percent of the proposed JETP finance will take the form of commercial loans, thus imposing considerably more debt on a country whose government is pursuing a full-on austerity agenda when the unemployment rate, in February 2024, stood above 32 percent. Vietnam fares little better. Close to 70 percent of IPG financing is in the form of commercial loans, and concessional loans account for less than a quarter of the IPG package.

Faced with these realities, it is wrong to blame (as some progressives do) developing country governments for the fact that the JETPs are currently in trouble. Any policy that requires developing countries to incur more debt is not “just,” especially when the result is intended to produce a “global public good” in the form of lower emissions. If reducing coal use is indeed a global public good, then why must South Africa, Indonesia, and Vietnam be financially responsible for its delivery?

But the crisis of climate finance — whether blended or not — has global implications. As the prophet of “green growth” Lord Nicholas Stern and his cothinkers highlighted in a 2022 study, Secretary Clinton’s $100 billion per year finance target was negotiated by politicians and diplomats; “it was not deduced from analyses of what is necessary.” In other words, a lot more money will need to be “unlocked” if energy transition targets are going to be reached. The study pointed out that “developing countries other than China will need to spend around $1 trillion per year by 2025 (4.1 percent of gross domestic product [GDP] compared with 2.2 percent in 2019) and around $2.4 trillion per year by 2030 (6.5 percent of GDP).” Furthermore, “Around half of the required the financing can be reasonably expected to come from local sources” but “around $1 trillion per year of external finance will be required by 2030 to meet the scale of the investment needs.”

The trillion-dollar question, therefore, is this: If blended finance has until now not been able to mobilize private investment in the Global South, how can it be expected to do better in the future?

Hosting Debt, Surrendering Sovereignty

This brings us to the issue of privatization and the “conditionalities” associated with the JETPs.

One of the misconceptions that have accompanied the JETPs is the idea that the money from the rich countries is, as it were, on the table, and that host countries would be foolish not to use it to accelerate their respective energy transitions. But the JETP agreements are clear: host countries must first develop an investment and implementation plan before the finance, which is based on donor pledges, can be accessed.

South Africa, Indonesia, and Vietnam have already complied with this IPG requirement, and the contents of each of the implementation plans are revealing. First, in each case, JETP financing amounts to a fraction of what’s needed. According to the respective plans, South Africa will, by 2030, need $65 billion in investment for the power sector alone. In the case of Indonesia, “approximately $97.1 billion of cumulative power sector investments are required by 2030 under the JETP scenario.” Vietnam’s plan estimates that the country will require $134.7 billion from domestic and international sources by 2030.

Second, host country elites, contrary to the evidence, seem to believe that JETP financing can “catalyze” private sector investment. According to Daniel Mminele, head of the Presidential Climate Finance Task Team, the JETP package “is insufficient to fund our [South Africa’s] transition” but JETP dollars will be “dwarfed by what is available in the private capital markets — we need to develop mechanisms to mobilize these forms of finance to invest in South Africa’s just transition.”

But what are the “mechanisms” (beyond prayer) that will allow $8.5 billion in mostly commercial loans to “unlock” more than ten times that amount to cover the costs of the transition to 2030? Similarly, Indonesia’s implementation plan sees the US$20 billion JETP as “an important catalyst.” But how will $20 billion in loans “crowd in” almost five times as much investment?

Third, the IPG-GFANZ axis has made it clear that access to JETP finance is contingent upon the host country being able to create an “enabling environment for the private sector,” and pursue a “policy reform strategy in both the energy and financial sectors to catalyze investment” in a “market-driven manner.” As noted above, in South Africa’s case, the JETP agreement calls for the unbundling of the public utility (Eskom) — a clear precursor to privatization. But similar language is used in the agreements with Indonesia and Vietnam. Getting in on the act, the GFANZ group sees private sector finance as contingent on “continued policy reform” and “a robust pipeline of competitively tendered projects.” Then, and only then, will the $7.75 billion become real. Rather than being a “game changer,” the JETPs extend the existing climate financing game deep into overtime.

It is therefore unfortunate that progressive opinion has been critical of unions for opposing the JETPs. For example, Adam Tooze turned on the South Africa’s NUM for not thinking of the greater good. The union, wrote Tooze,

represents 50,000 workers with a strong voice and a stranglehold on the existing, derelict system. There are 2.5 million people living in communities closely tied to coal mining. But South Africa is a nation of almost 60 million desperate for [electrical] power. Renewables are the cheap future.

JETP financing invites poor countries to borrow money to finance an energy transition and thus incur more debt than they would have if they had done nothing at all. Meanwhile, the MDBs, private investors, and rich country governments are making financing contingent on poor countries creating an “enabling environment” for the private sector, including commitments to privatize their energy systems. But what if the enabling environment isn’t enabling enough? What happens if, as seems likely, the private sector does not show up?

These questions have yet to be answered because there are simply no convincing answers available. The evidence strongly suggests that the JETPs will not pass the “mobilize” test; they will not “catalyze” anything significant. The sad story of climate finance — blended or not — will continue. For developing countries, the risks to both energy sovereignty and energy security are considerable. For the world, the risks may be even greater.

This article was first published in the Spring 2024 issue of New Labor Forum, a journal from the Murphy Institute at the City University of New York’s School of Labor and Urban Studies.

_{Sean Sweeney is the director of the International Program on Labor, Climate & Environment at the School of Labor and Urban Studies, City University of New York. He also coordinates Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) a global network of 64 unions from 22 countries. TUED advocates for democratic control and social ownership of energy resources, infrastructure, and options.}

From polycrisis to ecosocialism / by Michael J. Albert

_{^{Photo by Ria Sopala}}

We need to look beyond the ecosocialist horizon: investigating the dynamics, mechanisms and challenges involved in transitioning beyond capitalism

_{Reposted from The Ecologist}

There is no shortage of proposals for more just and sustainable futures beyond capitalism – whether we call this future ecosocialism, degrowth, or something else. The really difficult question, however, is how we get from here to there.

As Kim Stanley Robinson memorably puts it, we must “imagine the bridge over the Great Trench, given the world we’re in and the massively entrenched power of the institutions that shape our lives.”

This is one of the things my new book, Navigating the Polycrisis: Mapping the Futures of Capitalism and the Earth, tries to do. Rather than focusing on the ideal end-pointof ecosocialist transformation, I argue that we need a deeper exploration of the possible dynamics, mechanisms, and challenges of the transition process beyond capitalism.

Polycrisis

I assume that ecosocialist transitions would need to begin via programmes of Green Keynesian reform, and that future crises will create windows of opportunities for these reforms.

As I show in Navigating the Polycrisis, the capitalist world system will likely confront unprecedented “polycrisis” events by the early 2030s – referring to mutually amplifying shocks across the domains of political economy, climate, energy, food, and geopolitics.

If left-green movements remain weak in this conjuncture, then dominant responses like today will continue to prioritise short-termist energy and food security strategies that perpetuate ecologically damaging practices.

But if these movements become increasingly coordinated, popular, and capable of generating an unprecedented wave of sustained mass actions by this time, then it may be possible to pursue what Erik Olin Wright calls “symbiotic” strategies of Green Keynesian reform – in coalition with elements of green capital – to respond to these crises.

These may include progressive carbon tax and dividend schemes, moratoria on new licenses for fossil fuel extraction, ramping up public investment in renewable energy infrastructure, and enhanced labour protections and bargaining rights for workers.

This is merely a brief sketch of one possible path towards ecosocialism, and the book sketches other potential pathways as well.

Transmission

The hope here is that centre-left elites may finally get serious about the need – as even Emmanuel Macron has recognised – to accelerate the energy transition in a socially just manner, and that climate justice movements will become sufficiently powerful to elect and hold them to account.

However, I argue that these Green Keynesian policies – more radical than what we see today, but a far cry from what should be done – may prolong the cost-of-living crises they were intended to resolve.

This is because they will likely have inflationary impacts by increasing near-term costs for consumers (e.g. to retrofit homes, swap gas boilers for heat pumps, and replace ICE cars for EVs), ramping up demand for transition minerals at a rate that exceeds supply, and requiring dramatic investment in electricity storage and transmission infrastructure (which will temporarily increase energy costs).

Greenflation

Europe is already facing a popular backlash – though arguably exaggerated – against climate and biodiversity policies. In a future scenario of ‘greenflation’ caused in part by an accelerated energy transition, the rightwing backlash would be even more ferocious.

However, if left-green forces dramatically gain strength, then a greenflation crisis could also create the conditions for more radical transformation by undermining the legitimacy of technocratic green capitalism and motivating deeper transformation in the direction of ecosocialism.

While reversion to fossil-fuelled ‘growth at all costs’ is more likely in this scenario, a push towards ecosocialism is also plausible. After all, by the 2030s, and especially the 2040s, the worsening climate emergency will become increasingly obvious to most people.

In this context, left-green movements will be in strong position to argue that the problem is not the accelerated energy transition but how it is conducted under capitalist social relations.

They will be able to show that the main problem is our economic model in which living has a “cost” in the first placeand in which energy infrastructures are controlled by profit-oriented elites.

Ecosocialism

For people suffering from repeated cost-of-living crises, such narratives may resonate widely and generate broad popular support for more radical ecosocial policies – including universal public services and/or basic income, replacing GDP with alternative indicators focused on economic security and well-being, and increased community or public ownership of energy infrastructure.

This creates a challenge for the left: while we must fight for Green Keynesianism in the near term, we must also prepare for the disruptions and forms of backlash these reforms would most likely encounter, and then win the narrative battle that would ensue.

Even in the best-case scenario in which climate justice movements succeed in pushing governments towards ecosocialism, this would merely be the beginning.

The capitalist class would not go down without fighting tooth-and-nail – through capital flight, media campaigns, disinformation operations, cyberattacks, and other means.

Post-capitalist

To stop them, there would need to be a critical mass of left-green states that can internationally coordinate capital controls, trade, security, and industrial policies to collectively fend off reactionary attacks while sustaining political and economic stability.

Domestically, each incremental advance of popular democratic control vis-à-vis the capitalist class will need to catalyse further democratic advances.

For instance, by extending universal public services or basic income, more people would be loosened from the discipline of labour markets, allowing them to devote more time and energy to activism or participation in nascent forms of solidarity economies and empowered citizens assemblies.

Strategies

Since each advance of democratic control over the economy will invite counterattacks, such feedbacks can only be repelled by politically mobilising more and more people towards creating and defending a more participatory, equitable, and sustainable post-capitalist economy.

This is merely a brief sketch of one possible path towards ecosocialism, and the book sketches other potential pathways as well.

The key point is that we need to systematically explore this possibility space in order to inform left-green strategies in the present.

Otherwise, we are moving headlong into the future without a map to guide us, leaving us to merely react to events as they occur. No political actor seriously hoping to shape the future would do the same.

_{Michael J Albert is a lecturer in global environmental politics at the University of Edinburgh.}

CO2 Pipelines Are Big Oil’s New Mode of Destruction / by Emily Sanders

_{^{A sign against a proposed carbon dioxide pipeline outside a home in New Liberty, Iowa, on June 4, 2023. (Miriam Alarcon Avila / Bloomberg via Getty Images)}}

Big Oil has launched a lobbying blitz to scale back safety regulations for its build-out of experimental carbon dioxide pipelines, endangering nearby communities in the event of a leak.

_{Reposted from Jacobin}

Acarbon dioxide pipeline rupture in the small village of Satartia, Mississippi, sent nearly fifty people to the hospital with “zombie”-like conditions in 2020, and now another major leak from a pipeline in Sulphur, Louisiana, has once again exposed the risks carbon dioxide pipelines pose to communities in their path.

Soon, pipelines like this could be coming to cities and towns throughout the country. Spurred by federal tax incentives from the Biden administration, the fossil fuel industry is planning to build tens of thousands of miles of carbon dioxide (CO2) pipelines across the United States for experimental carbon capture and storage — a process aimed at sequestering carbon emissions from power plants, sending it through pipelines, and injecting it underground.

While regulators are working to craft updated safety rules for these pipelines, major fossil fuel companies and their trade groups — including Chevron, ConocoPhillips, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Liquid Energy Pipeline Association — have launched a lobbying blitz to scale back regulations and target the regulators themselves so they can construct new pipelines as quickly as possible.

Carbon dioxide is an asphyxiant. Upon entering the atmosphere during a pipeline leak or rupture, it can travel long distances, shut down vehicles, and sicken, suffocate, or even kill people and wildlife.

Only about five hundred miles of carbon dioxide pipelines currently exist across the country, largely operating in states across the Midwest and Gulf Coast. Many communities, landowners, and environmental and public health groups have staunchly opposed and, in some cases, successfully prevented their build-out, such as eliminating the proposed 1,300-mile Navigator pipeline that would have crossed through five Midwestern states.

But now, this pipeline network could be greatly expanded. According to the US Department of Energy and financial industry estimates, it could take up to ninety-six thousand miles of new carbon dioxide pipelines — enough to wrap around the earth four times — to transport just 15 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the federal agency tasked with pipeline safety, announced in 2022 that it would update rules for carbon dioxide pipelines.

The agency, which is overseen by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and was implicated in the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, is itself up for reauthorization, meaning Congress will reconsider its lawmaking mandates and funding. Now the pipeline industry, represented by its main lobbying group, the Liquid Energy Pipeline Association, is using both the rulemaking and reauthorization processes to push its agenda forward.

“There is no need for adding a host of punitive provisions on the pipeline industry,” reads written January testimony from Andrew Black, the lobbying group’s president and CEO, to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has proposed a bill on the pipeline safety agency’s reauthorization. “The data just does not support those who wish to impose harsh new mandates or penalties on pipeline operators.”

On March 6, the Liquid Energy Pipeline Association arranged a meeting with the White House Office of Management and Budget, which is currently reviewing the draft carbon dioxide safety rules. Also present at the meeting were representatives from ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Marathon, TC Energy, Kinder Morgan, Phillips 66, and Valero, along with representatives from the Department of Transportation.

“THE ADMINSTRATION [sic] SHOULD AVOID AN OVERLY BROAD OR UNSUBSTANTIATED CO2 PIPELINES RULEMAKING THAT RISKS DELAY AND IMPERILS FINALIZATION,” reads the all-caps intro to the lobbying group’s talking points for that meeting.

In response to a request for comment, president and CEO Black offered several reasons “why we think a measured approach to pipeline safety legislation is appropriate.” According to Black, federal data shows “the number of CO2 pipeline incidents is flat over the last 5 years,” and “Federal regulation imposes dozens of safety requirements on interstate CO2 pipelines on everything from design and construction to inspection, maintenance, and emergency response.”

Robin Rorick, one of the American Petroleum Institute’s vice presidents, said in an email,

The safe use and development of CO2 pipelines will be critical as our industry and the nation as a whole advances its emissions reduction efforts. API will continue to work with [Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration] and industry experts to safely accelerate the widescale, responsible deployment of CO2 pipelines while protecting the environment and communities where we live and work.

An Invisible Menace

The urgency of this issue reemerged this month after a carbon dioxide leak from a pipeline in Sulphur co-owned by ExxonMobil and Denbury, a carbon capture developer that owns the country’s largest carbon dioxide pipeline network.

Residents within a quarter mile of the leak received a phone notification to shelter in place. But others only received the news from a Facebook post by local officials, citing a “bust” in Exxon’s high-pressure carbon dioxide pipeline and warning residents to shut their doors and windows, turn off any ventilation, and wait.

While the proper procedure is to evacuate, local fire chief Todd Parker said changing winds near the leak made that impossible. “For the homes that were affected, they had to drive through the release to be able to get out, so we couldn’t evacuate them,” Parker explained. He said it took more than two hours for pipeline operators to stop the leak, which was called in by a resident who reported seeing “white clouds” coming from the pipeline.

In the meantime, Roishetta Ozane, a Sulphur resident and local environmental justice organizer, began fielding calls from panicked residents.

“People were reaching out asking me about what CO2 is,” Ozane said. But as a mom of six children, she was also scared and confused. “We know that this is colorless and odorless, so I just kept my children inside and made sure they were OK,” said Ozane. “Pipelines leak, CO2 leaks, and you don’t know it’s happened until tragedy has struck.”

She remembered the incident in Satartia, where another Denbury carbon dioxide pipeline rupture caused mass asphyxiation, turning people into dazed and unresponsive “zombies,” with some losing consciousness. As hundreds rushed to evacuate, vehicles became paralyzed, since cars need oxygen to burn fuel. Some residents still face serious health issues years later.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration slapped Denbury with the second-largest fine in its history after the Satartia disaster for neglecting to address hazards to its pipeline system and notify emergency responders of the leak or train them to address such an accident before it happened.

The leak in Sulphur is “a very sobering introduction to how the companies will probably try to handle similar incidents,” said journalist Dan Zegart, who reported in depth on the Satartia disaster. “I say ‘similar incidents’ not even really knowing what [kind of leak] we’re talking about here, which is a perfect example of what we’re worried about in the future.”

An ExxonMobil spokesperson told the Lever in an email that they are “conducting a thorough investigation into the cause of the release and will use any findings to improve future operations. Our priority is to help maintain the safety of the community, our personnel, and the environment.”

No injuries have been reported so far in Sulphur — regulators are still investigating the leak and the local municipality said it did not have records to provide — but the bewildering incident highlights the uncertain future for residents in the path of the carbon dioxide pipeline build-out.

“It is alarming that we have been organizing, educating the community, educating ourselves, and trying to get answers from the government on [carbon capture and storage] in Louisiana for three years now, and we still did not have the information or frankly relationships necessary to get real-time information on what was happening [in Sulphur],” said Jane Patton, a campaign manager at the nonprofit advocacy group, the Center for International Environmental Law.

“[The Liquid Energy Pipeline Association] supports Congress mandating and [Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration] imposing new safety requirements on CO2 pipelines reflecting the lessons learned from the Satartia, MS pipeline incident,” said Black, the lobbying group’s president, in his email to the Lever. He added that the organization “looks forward to the results of Sulphur, LA pipeline incident review and any recommendations it produces for how to improve CO2 pipeline safety further.”

A Carbon Capture Future?

ExxonMobil — which purchased Denbury last year — is planning to build carbon capture infrastructure throughout Louisiana, where about a third of the nation’s carbon capture projects have been proposed.

Exxon did not respond to requests for comment.

“We’ve got plans to grow our carbon capture business and really focus on emitters all along that Denbury pipeline,” Exxon CEO Darren Woods told Louisiana newspaper the Advocate in February. “What we’re doing is taking advantage of the ability to pump carbon dioxide back into the ground and store it very safely. It’s isolated from the rest of the community.”

Patton says that such statements are just “another lie that we’re being sold” by the fossil fuel industry.

“Louisiana is magic, and I want to be able to pass this magic on to the next generation behind me,” she said. “We deserve a future here and that future is not in carbon capture.”

Scientists have been sounding the alarm that carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is not an effective way to reduce emissions and is most often used for enhanced oil recovery, which means accessing more fossil fuels to be burned. The Department of Energy just announced it would invest $23 million in two projects to evaluate the potential for enhanced oil recovery using captured carbon dioxide.

In internal company documents, the oil and gas industry has privately admitted that though CCS is “complex, costly, and will require additional power,” it will “enable the use of petroleum and natural gas” well into the future.

But thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which ratcheted up tax credits available for carbon capture technology, the race is on to build out carbon dioxide pipelines.

Meanwhile, advocates say their concerns are being ignored. “You’ve got communities, NGOs on pipeline safety, governmental experts on pipeline safety all raising alarm about the hazards of what is being planned,” said Monique Harden, director of law and policy at the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice. “What you don’t have is the response of protection or response that validates those concerns. Instead, what you have is silence.”

Last week, US Department of Energy assistant secretary Brad Crabtree told the Illinois newspaper the Springfield State Journal-Register, “I would argue that our electric transmission and distribution infrastructure, it’s essential to modern life, but it also results in injuries and fatalities. . . . But as a result of those risks, we do not have people saying we shouldn’t have electric transmission and distribution. . . . CO2 pipelines are no different in that regard.”

Many of the proposed pipeline projects would run through communities like Sulphur — low-income communities of color already burdened by polluting petrochemical and fossil fuel facilities. These communities often have minimal resources to respond to worsening extreme weather events, like a tornado that destroyed the office of Ozane’s disaster-relief and environmental justice nonprofit not far from Sulphur just days after the leak.

“On top of the fact that this is taking public money, it is essentially a program where the federal government pays the oil and gas industry to deal with its own waste product in a way that burdens communities and makes us demonstrably less safe,” said Patton. “Accidents that happen along CO2 pipeline routes are going to become more common and much more dangerous if this program is allowed to move forward.”

While significant public resources are being deployed to develop this technology, understanding of carbon dioxide pipeline leaks — how they happen, the extent of their damage, and how they should be addressed — lags far behind.

“Often you need the knowledge gaps to be filled before you can fully fill the regulatory gaps,” said Bill Caram, executive director of Pipeline Safety Trust, an organization that advocates for stronger regulations on pipeline safety. “Right now, CO2 pipelines are relatively rare and relatively rural, and we’re moving toward building a lot more CO2 pipelines closer to communities. I don’t think we are ready to do that safely.”

Current carbon dioxide pipelines are largely located in small communities with underpaid or volunteer fire departments, many of which lack equipment to respond to and monitor for carbon dioxide leaks. In Sulphur’s case, the fire chief said he had not seen an emergency response protocol from the company until after the leak occurred.

Environmental and public health groups are pushing federal regulators for additional pipeline safety provisions, including updated “dispersion modeling” requirements, which show how carbon dioxide moves and would help emergency personnel respond to accidents, and adding odorants to the carbon dioxide to warn community members of a leak.

Groups are also advocating for new limits on contaminants in the pipelines that can lead to corrosion; mandates for training and coordination between pipeline operators and first responders; and additional rules for transporting gaseous and liquid carbon dioxide, which are currently unregulated.

Pipeline Pushback

But companies, and the lobbying groups that represent them, are pushing back. Since the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration announced its intention to make new rules on carbon dioxide pipelines in 2022, records show that Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Enbridge, Marathon, Shell, and Targa, along with trade associations like Liquid Energy Pipeline Association, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, have been lobbying the agency on pipeline infrastructure, rulemaking, and safety, and/or lobbying on the agency’s reauthorization, among other issues.

During their March meeting at the White House Office of Management and Budget, fossil fuel interests appeared to push for rulemaking that prioritizes secrecy and expediency over safety and transparency.

“Any emergency response requirements should ensure the protection of sensitive information and be aligned with industry current best practices,” reads API’s talking points from the meeting. “The rule must be technically feasible and set realistic timelines for implementation to ensure it supports rather than hinders the build-out of this additional CO2 pipeline infrastructure.”

Maggie Coulter, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said advocacy groups are particularly concerned about the industry’s attempts to keep data about potential pipeline leaks hidden from the public. One of the bills being considered for Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s safety reauthorization, which has received broad support from industry trade groups, contains a provision for the “protection of sensitive information in responding to a public request for information regarding carbon dioxide dispersion modeling.”

“There’s an additional cost in doing things safely and increased public scrutiny when you’re affirmatively tasked with informing first responders and members of the public,” said Coulter. “Right now we just have to trust the company.”

Black, president of the Liquid Energy Pipeline Association, said in his comment to the Lever that his organization “supports operators sharing the results of pipeline modeling with state and local emergency planning officials and first responders,” but advocates for “limiting general public sharing of security sensitive information, as is the current approach for crude oil pipelines, to prevent bad actors from misusing this information to harm surrounding communities.”

Black did not respond directly to questions about evidence showing that pipeline operators have failed to communicate with first responders ahead of and properly respond to CO2 pipeline disasters in the past.

Caram of Pipeline Safety Trust said that given the risks that carbon dioxide pipelines pose to communities across the country, the companies involved shouldn’t be allowed to dictate their own safety standards.

“It’s like the difference between a speed limit of 55 mph as opposed to a sign saying, ‘Please drive safely,’” Caram said. “We need something specific to hold them to.”

_{Emily Sanders is climate journalist based in Queens, New York.}

Maine youth, environmentalists sue the state for lack of action to cut carbon emissions / by AnnMarie Hilton

_{^{Climate change protesters in 2019 at an event in Manchester, New Hampshire. (Scott Eisen/Getty Images)}}

_{Reposted from Maine Morning Star}

Maine youth and environmentalists are suing the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for what they allege is a failure to take action on cutting carbon emissions.

Conservation Law Foundation, Maine Youth Action and the Sierra Club filed a petition in the Maine Superior Court against the DEP for not following a 2019 law that requires the state to cut its carbon emissions 45% by 2030 and 80% by 2050.

“Our generation will inherit a state overwhelmed by carbon emissions and climate change — with damage to the environment, to marine life, and to our own health — if we can’t start making these changes now,” said Cole Cochrane, co-founder and policy director of Maine Youth Action.

The DEP declined to comment about the suit. However, Gov. Janet Mills put out a proclamation Monday in honor of Earth Day saying the state has made “extraordinary progress toward our climate goals,” referring to the state’s climate action plan, Maine Won’t Wait, that is intended to act as a roadmap for businesses and communities to urgently take action.

However, the environmental groups bringing the lawsuit claim the state has failed to take any significant steps to lower emissions since the law was enacted five years ago.

For example, the lawsuit includes the Board of Environmental Protection due to its recent rejection of a rule that would have required clean, electric vehicles to make up the majority of new car sales by 2030. The board rejected that rule last month in part because of what it said were lingering questions about the policy, as well as because they believed such a large decision would be better placed in the hands of elected officials.

With transportation contributing nearly half of all greenhouse gas emissions in Maine, climate advocates supported the rule as a means to curb pollution while expanding vehicle options for consumers.

“The failure in curbing emissions from cars and trucks — Maine’s biggest source of pollution — has been stark,” said the release about the lawsuit.

The lawsuit argues that Maine citizens represented by the groups have suffered harms related to the lack of action to address climate change, including “property and financial impacts due to sea level rise and other climate change effects; impacts on winter recreational activities that are snow- or ice- dependent; negative health impacts from elongated and worsened allergy seasons; and consumer harm from lack of choice of affordable zero emission vehicles in Maine.”

“Defendants’ failure or refusal to fulfill their obligations causes these harms by failing to mitigate and protect Maine residents from the worst effects of climate change,” the suit states.

Emily K. Green, senior attorney for Conservation Law Foundation Maine, said the parties don’t want to have to go to the courts to pursue climate action. “Environmentalists, health advocates, concerned young people — all of us want to work with the state to cut these emissions, curb climate change, and improve respiratory and heart health,” Green said. “We shouldn’t have to sue to make that happen.”

Though not directly named in the suit, a proposed constitutional amendment that would grant Mainers the right to a clean and healthy environment has also faced inaction in the Maine Legislature. The bill, LD 928, was tabled by the Maine House of Representatives in April 2023 and remained untouched. With the close of the legislative session, that bill will die without a floor vote.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to note the DEP declined to comment on the suit.

_{AnnMarie Hilton grew up in a suburb of Chicago and studied journalism at Northwestern University. Before coming to Maine, she covered education for newspapers in Wisconsin and Indiana.}

Commentary – A call for economic degrowth / by Kohei Saitoa

_{^{Though renewable energy can significantly reduce carbon emissions, if growth remains the global economic imperative, increased energy use will prevent us from reaching decarbonization goals | GILLES SABRIE / THE NEW YORK TIMES}}

GDP expansion under a green agenda is part of the problem, not the solution

_{Reposted from the Japan Times}

“No poverty,” “zero hunger,” “gender equality,” “climate action”. These lofty ideals are expressed in several of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. Understandably, the SDGs have become very popular in Japan.

Can the 17 goals — launched by the U.N. in 2015 to be reached by the end of this decade — really save the world from the multipronged crises of climate change, inflation, war and populism? I start off my book “Slow Down” with a resounding “no,” arguing that “the SDGs are the new opiate of the masses.” In fact, the U.N. goals have become popular in a conservative society like Japan precisely because they do not demand transformative, systemic change but, rather, aim to preserve the status quo.

In fact, if one looks at the concrete proposals of companies and the media to achieve these goals, they often advocate for individuals to adopt eco-friendly behaviors such as opting for reusable bags and bottles, reducing food waste and recycling fast fashion products.

Although these small, individual behaviors are obviously insufficient to tackle the “polycrisis,” actions like recycling and buying eco-products relieve our conscience. And the feeling of satisfaction hinders us from recognizing the real root causes of today’s emergency.

This is also partly why the SDGs are used by companies to enhance their public image: They function as a marketing and greenwashing tool to reassure consumers that the act of constantly buying new commodities actually contributes to enhancing equality and sustainability. No wonder, then, that the discourse of redeeming capitalism with the SDGs has been so easily watered down.

Thus, the polycrisis has only gotten worse year after year because, at the moment, almost no one is challenging the business as usual model, even though urgent actions are needed given the chronic state of the emergency we are in.

Achieving rapid decarbonization to reach the Paris Agreement’s target — namely limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century — demands ending wasteful mass production and consumption for the sake of endless economic growth.

Concretely, this means banning luxurious, unnecessary products such as private jets, cruise ships and yachts, as well as drastically reducing meat consumption and the sale of SUVs, in addition to investing in green technologies and infrastructure. However, the current economic and political system is incapable of seriously considering such options — no matter how necessary they are — because they are against the logic of endless capital accumulation.

Within a capitalist society, the only solution to the global ecological crisis is growth, growth and more growth. Popular proposals such as Society 5.0 in Japan and the Green New Deal in the United States aim to make energy and resource usage more efficient and create more stable jobs with higher salaries. They wish to achieve both economic growth and a transition to a sustainable society by decoupling growth from energy and resource usage.

Although innovation is surely important, green growth cannot realize the ideals of the SDGs. Capitalism does not necessarily produce what is needed, but what is profitable. Even if technology increases productivity and efficiency, if the price of goods goes down due to higher productivity, consumption also increases, so efficiency gains would be lost. This is called Jevons paradox.

Furthermore, new green technologies such as electric vehicles and renewables — while having the potential to significantly reduce carbon emissions — still employ massive amounts of resources and energy. Therefore, if, as we invest in such technologies, growth remains the absolute imperative of economic activities, large electric SUVs and more solar panels will continue to be manufactured in greater quantities, with models changing constantly, and more and more marketing campaigns.

As a result, despite the introduction of such advances, resource and energy use will not decrease sufficiently to achieve decarbonization.

Intense competition for green growth in the Global North is also likely to accelerate monopolization by a few companies, which will increasingly widen economic disparities, and make people more vulnerable to precarious employment and long working hours.

Furthermore, the expropriation of resources and land in the Global South by companies from the Global North will exacerbate inequality worldwide. This is the inevitable result of ecological imperialism.

In contrast, the introduction of new technologies in the context of degrowth would result in a shortening of working hours — instead of the creation of more products by working the same hours as before — though, if poorly introduced, this paradigm shift could also lead to recession and increased unemployment.

Although some of the SDGs’ targets can be implemented without the need for technological innovations, the focus on green growth alone may end up marginalizing these important targets, such as economic equality through redistribution, gender equality and the elimination of racial discrimination.

In short, economic growth is appealing because of its simplicity. It dismisses the complexity of justice, equality and sustainability by converting everything into a single economic value and concentrating only on its increase. In this sense, abandoning the gross domestic product as the measure of social progress is a prerequisite for addressing solutions to structural problems that have been marginalized under the growth imperative. This is what degrowth calls for.

Today’s world is characterized by poverty and inequality. But these exist not necessarily due to insufficient production. Our society already has the technology and resources to meet the basic needs of all people, but they are concentrated in the hands of a few and, moreover, employed to seek endless economic growth, instead of providing everyone with adequate living standards.

In this context, accelerating innovation does not lead to saving the planet. By slowing down, degrowth opens the path to a truly just transition.

_{Kohei Saito is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Tokyo. He is the author of “Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto” (Astra Publishing House, 2024).}

Maine House throws cold water on proposal to coax better performance from CMP, Versant / by Evan Popp

_{^{Central Maine Power is Maine’s largest utility with more than 636,000 customers in a state of fewer than 1.4 million people. (Getty Images)}}

Proponents said if the state wants its utilities to perform better, it needs to create rules that incentivize the companies to further Maine’s grid-related policy goals

_{Reposted from Maine Morning Star}

The Maine House rejected a bill Wednesday that would direct regulators to explore performance-based ratemaking for Central Maine Power and Versant, which last year beat back a referendum to replace the companies with a consumer-owned model.

The House voted 75-67 against LD 2172, sponsored by Rep. Gerry Runte (D-York). Republicans largely opposed the legislation but a handful of Democrats also voted against it. The proposal then moved to the Senate on Thursday, where it was tabled, meaning it will be taken up at a later date.

Runte’s bill would require the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to examine performance-based metrics that could be implemented for utilities and conduct that examination every three years thereafter. Generally speaking, performance-based ratemaking (PBR) creates specific benchmarks for utilities to meet. The utilities could then get rewarded if they meet the targets or be penalized if they don’t.

The performance of Maine’s primary investor-owned utilities, CMP and Versant, has been a frequent topic of discussion in recent years. The companies’ relative unpopularity with Mainers, frustration with their quality of service and concerns about their for-profit business model spurred the referendum last fall to replace CMP and Versant with a nonprofit, consumer-owned utility. However, Mainers voted down the measure amid a deluge of spending against the proposal.

During Wednesday’s debate in the House, Rep. Sophia Warren, a Democrat from Scarborough, argued there isn’t sufficient evidence that LD 2172 would benefit ratepayers and improve the utility system.

“We cannot with any guarantee know the outcome of this legislation, and I believe that is a potentially quite harmful consequence we must take seriously,” said Warren, adding that she would support a targeted study on PBR policies in Maine.

Warren — a critic of CMP and Versant who supported the referendum to replace the companies — also pushed back against proponents who have argued that the bill will hasten Maine’s clean energy transition. She said nothing in the legislation ties a utility’s performance to making the grid more sustainable.

Republican Rep. Steven Foster of Dexter also expressed opposition to the bill. Among other issues, Foster argued that some parts of the proposal are duplicative of a 2022 bill that requires the PUC to adopt rules for CMP and Versant. Specifically, the PUC was tasked under that law with creating quantitative metrics around service quality along with coming up with a report card to evaluate utilities.

Runte said LD 2172 is meant to build on that previous measure. And he added that if the state wants CMP and Versant to perform better, it needs to create rules that incentivize the companies to further Maine’s grid-related policy goals — which he argued is currently lacking.

“LD 2172 attempts to solve this problem by directing the PUC to begin a process to define how we want our utilities to perform in the 21st century, as well as consider modern models of utility regulation that better align a utility’s performance with these new goals,” he said.

Under Runte’s proposal, the PUC would have to establish goals and evaluate options for creating metrics to determine how well utilities meet certain criteria. In creating those goals, PUC would have to keep in mind the following: benefit to ratepayers, promotion of cost efficiency and affordability, increased planning for extreme weather and climate hazards, a comprehensive response to outages, and support of renewable resource and greenhouse gas reduction goals. The goals would also have to be consistent with the state’s climate action plan.

Runte said the process for coming up with goals for utilities to meet and metrics to evaluate them is kept deliberately flexible in the bill, giving appropriate latitude to the PUC to determine what will work best for Maine and to adjust policies as needed.

The bill would further require that the commission get input from various stakeholders, mandate that the PUC provide a summary of its performance-based ratemaking actions, task the organization with coming up with recommendations for forming a regulatory policy group within the commission, and require the PUC to implement emerging reforms if such changes better align with state goals.

Runte pointed out that 17 states have approved similar reforms, although Warren noted that just two states have moved to extensively implement PBR policies, and she argued the experience of one of those states — Connecticut — has not been positive.

But Rep. Valli Geiger (D-Rockland) said that although Mainers voted down the November referendum to replace CMP and Versant, that doesn’t mean they are happy with the service provided by the companies. She said implementing PBR would provide the state the tools to bring the utilities into alignment with important goals, particularly when it comes to the clean energy transition.

Both CMP and Versant have been tepid about the bill. During a committee hearing earlier this year, a representative from Versant said the company is willing to take initial steps toward performance-based ratemaking but called for the goals established by the PUC to be brought back to lawmakers for review. And CMP argued the time isn’t right for Runte’s bill because lawmakers should first see how recent regulations, like the 2022 bill, work out.

_{Evan Popp} _{studied journalism at Ithaca College. He joins Maine Morning Star following three years at Maine Beacon writing about statewide politics. Before that, he worked for the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper and interned at the Progressive magazine, ThinkProgress and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.}

Accelerationist possibilities in an ecosocialist degrowth scenario / by Jason Hickel

_{^{Image via Agianst the Current}}

_{Reposted from Jason Hickel blog}

I want to make a brief intervention here to highlight an aspect of degrowth climate mitigation strategy that has so far been inadequately developed. It is widely understood that scaling down less-necessary forms of production can contribute substantially to decarbonization, in two direct and obvious ways. First, it directly reduces emissions in addition to what can be achieved through efficiency improvements and renewable energy deployment. Second, it reduces total energy demand and therefore makes it possible to decarbonize the energy system much more quickly, because it is not necessary to install as much new infrastructure, and the process of doing it involves less extraction and emissions. These are powerful benefits.

But there are several other benefits to a degrowth scenario that are less widely understood and are worth considering.

Here’s the main thing. If high-income countries are to decarbonize fast enough to stay within their fair-share of Paris-compliant carbon budgets, then urgent climate mitigation tasks – like building renewable energy capacity, insulating buildings, expanding public transit, innovating and distributing more efficient technologies, regenerating land, etc – need to happen very quickly. This “green production” requires mobilizing massive amounts of labour, factories, materials, engineering talent, and so on. In a growth-oriented scenario, this is difficult to do because our productive capacities are already devoted to other activities (activities that are organized around profit and which may not contribute to social and ecological objectives). So we need to either compete with existing forms of production (for labour, materials, energy etc, which can drive prices up), or otherwise increase total productive capacity (i.e., grow the economy). This cannot be done at just any desired speed. Under these conditions, there are very real physical limits to how fast we can decarbonize.

Scaling down less-necessary production solves this problem, not only because of the two benefits indicated above, but also because it liberates productive capacities (factories, labour, materials) which can then be remobilized to do the production and innovation required for rapid decarbonization. For example, factories that are presently devoted to producing SUVs can produce solar panels instead. Engineers that are presently developing private jets can work on innovating more efficient trains and wind turbines instead. Labour that is presently employed by fast fashion firms can be liberated to train and contribute to installing renewable capacity, insulating buildings, or a wide range of other necessary objectives depending on their interests, through a public job guarantee program linked to green public works.

This helps us rethink a longstanding question in ecological economics. Some ecomodernists have in the past argued that it is easier to achieve green transition in a bigger economy than in a smaller economy, because it means we have more capacity to devote to green production. But this fails to grasp the nature of the problem. Yes, a bigger economy may have more capacity, but in a growth-oriented scenario that capacity is already allocated. In this respect bigger economies face the same problem as smaller economies. But a degrowth scenario is not a “smaller economy” (i.e., a low-capacity economy). It is a high-capacity economy which is reducing less-necessary production, and therefore is suddenly endowed with spare capacity that can be redirected for necessary purposes. This is a unique situation that carries significant potential: it enables acceleration in the speed of green production and innovation at a rate faster than what can be achieved in a growth-oriented scenario.

By the way, this spare capacity can also be directed toward urgent social goals, too—for example to provision universal public services—in order to end the needless misery and deprivation that so many people suffer in our existing economy.

Of course, we need some way of mobilizing the spare capacity. This requires finance. And this brings us to another problem. Whoever controls finance determines what we produce, and therefore how our productive capacity is allocated. In our existing economy, finance is controlled by capital, and capital invests in producing what is most profitable rather than what is most necessary. This is why we get substantial investment in fossil fuels, SUVs and fast fashion (which are highly profitable) and insufficient investment in renewable energy, public transit and insulation (which are either not as profitable, or not profitable at all). Under capitalism, then, there are real limits to how quickly we can scale up green production and innovation. Capital would rather do other things.

To deal with this problem, we need a greater role for public finance. Instead of waiting for capital to make the necessary investments, governments that have sufficient monetary sovereignty can issue currency to do it directly, in the manner that we describe in this recent article in Ecological Economics (and see here for a discussion of options within the Eurozone). Of course, there are limits to this process: if the new demand exceeds the productive capacity of the economy, it will drive inflation. But this problem is mitigated in a degrowth scenario, where we are reducing less-necessary production and therefore liberating capacity. Furthermore, inflationary pressures can be controlled by using taxation to cut the purchasing power of the rich, and by regulating private money creation in both quantitative and qualitative ways.

It helps to recognize that when we talk about “investment”, money is just the vehicle. The real investment actually takes the form of allocating real productive capacity: real labour, materials, energy etc. Once we understand this fact, it becomes clear that a degrowth scenario enables investment in green production and innovation, by making real productive capacity available.

This represents an important rebuttal to the claim made by many economists that the only way to “fund” the green transition is first to increase growth. The assumption here is that we need higher GDP in order to obtain higher tax revenues to finance green production (in other words, increase corporate production of stuff, and then take some of the money from this to spend on green production). From this point of view, degrowth is self-defeating: less GDP, less tax revenue, less green production. But the flaw in this thinking should be immediately clear. Corporations do not produce money. They produce things. To say that we need to increase growth (i.e., increase production of existing things) in order to “fund” green production is tantamount to saying we need to increase production of SUVs, fast fashion and private jets in order to increase production of solar panels and public transit. Clearly this is absurd. We can increase green production directly, with public finance. And indeed this process is enabled – not inhibited – by reducing less-necessary forms of production and thus liberating productive capacity to be redirected for other purposes.

If this approach to public finance is so straightforward, why don’t governments do it? The short answer is: because they are capitalist. The approach I have described here represents an increase in democratic public control over productive capacity. This is good. We should have greater control over the allocation of our own collective labour and resources, so that we can direct it toward necessary objectives (compared to the existing arrangement, where capital controls our productive capacity, in a non-democratic way, and directs it toward what is profitable to capital). But this necessarily requires reducing capitalist control over productive capacity, which of course runs directly against the interests of capital accumulation. This is why capitalist governments tend to reproduce narratives like “we have to tax before we can spend” and “we must reduce the deficit”, even while knowing these claims to be false, because myths like these reign in our expectations for how much public production we can do, and indeed justify curtailing public production in order to ensure that a larger share of our productive capacity remains in the hands of private capital.

Of course, in high-income countries the remobilization of production to achieve ecological objectives must occur within an overall aggregate reduction of energy and material throughput to sustainable levels (degrowth), as ecological economists have established. We should also be clear that what I have described above need not reinscribe productivist or growthist visions. Yes, accelerated production of certain things is necessary to accomplish urgent social and ecological tasks (building sufficient renewable energy capacity and establishing universal public services, for instance), but these tasks are not indefinite and – unlike the objective of capitalist growth – do not require perpetually increasing production. Once necessary objectives are achieved, the level of production can be adjusted in a democratic way according to what is socially and ecologically necessary.

The power of this approach is extraordinary. Those who wish to unleash technological innovation and production to achieve ecological objectives often hitch their wagon to capitalist growth. But capitalism and growthism limit what we can achieve, for the reasons I’ve described here. Degrowth, combined with a robust public finance strategy, can enable us to overcome these limits, improve our potential for green production and innovation, and enable us to achieve rapid decarbonization.

_{Dr. Jason Hickel is an economic anthropologist, author, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is Professor at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Visiting Senior Fellow at the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics, and Chair Professor of Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo. He is Associate Editor of the journal World Development, and serves on the Climate and Macroeconomics Roundtable of the National Academy of Sciences, the Statistical Advisory Panel for the UN Human Development Report, the advisory board of the Green New Deal for Europe, the Harvard-Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice, and the Lancet Commission on Sustainable Health.}

We need public transit everywhere, not just big cities / by Leeann Hall

_{^{A caregiver helps a person get out of a van. | Getty Images}}

_{Reposted from the Maine Beacon}

All Americans should be able to get to their jobs, schools, and places of worship easily. It should be affordable and convenient for all of us to visit friends and family.

But many people in this country simply don’t enjoy that mobility — especially Mainers, who experience one of the lowest qualities of transit access. Maybe they don’t have a car. Maybe they can’t drive. Maybe the bus only comes once an hour. Or maybe there’s no bus service at all.

Better public transit is key — and not just in cities. Transit might look different in smaller towns and rural areas than in big cities, but it’s no less of a lifeline.

Over a million Americans in small and rural communities don’t have access to a car or the ability to operate one. A third of households only have one car. These people are left struggling to access jobs, services, and community life. This results in barriers to recreation, employment, medical care, and basic services for those most isolated from society — like senior citizens, children, young adults, and veterans.

But for far too long, policymakers in Washington have prioritized highways and cars over public transit. This has devastating impacts on transit, especially in the smaller towns and rural areas that need it.

A new piece of legislation introduced by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) would change that. The “Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act” would provide high-quality transit to communities across the country.

This vital piece of legislation would create a new formula grant program available to all transit agencies to increase service frequency and dependability. That means additional hours of service so people don’t have to wait so long for the bus, or so folks who don’t work white-collar hours can still get to their jobs. It would mean new, frequent service to underserved communities.

There’s nothing strange about this idea. For decades, the federal government has supported the cost of operating aviation through air traffic control and the cost of shipping through investments in ports and the management of locks and dams in the inland waterways.

These are essential services for the movement of goods and people. Operating high-quality transit is just as essential to get people to employment and to give businesses access to talent and customers. And it is time for Washington to treat it as such.

While Congress has taken vital steps in recent years to fund transit, including passing the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the lack of congressional action on operations funding has led to critical funding shortfalls at numerous transit agencies. This new legislation, and similar legislation offered by Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) in the last Congress, would help fix that for our communities.

Tens of millions of people in the U.S. — from small rural towns to major urban centers — rely on public transit to get to work every day, generating trillions of dollars in economic activity. Every dollar invested in transit offers a 5-to-1 return — and every $1 billion invested in public transit produces 50,000 jobs. Transit agencies are often among the largest employers in their cities.

We need to invest in transit everywhere, not just in big cities. Because an investment in transit is an investment in our community and our people.

And it is an investment we need Washington to make.

_{^{This column was first published by OtherWords.org}}

_{LeeAnn Hall is the director of the National Campaign for Transit Justice.}