Gee, who would have thought that to solve Hotcoldwetdry we’d need a totally new type of economic model? Well, if you’ve been paying attention, you. Because Warmists tell us their intentions, couched in cute language. This article initially seems as if it is Excuse-making for people not going fully climate change compliant, but…
Going green a drop in the ocean of change needed to fix climate crisis
So, you drive a Toyota Prius, you don’t eat red meat, you only buy organic food, you’ve started buying clothes made from organic bamboo, your household-cleaning products contain no nasty chemicals, you’ve got LED lightbulbs throughout your home and you’ve reluctantly decided to have only one child, despite really wanting more.
Are you now assured your place in a green heaven? Are you now confident your child will not turn to you in your dotage and blame you for the climate spiralling out of control? Can you have your cake and eat it too?
There is an argument that we cannot buy our way out of the climate crisis — that green consumerism is an oxymoron.
Well, if all Warmists practiced what they preach…
Environmental activist Derrick Jensen says green consumerism (now worth about $5-trillion globally) and other acts of “green thrift”, such as having shorter showers, is a “campaign of systematic misdirection” because it assigns blame to the individual instead of those who actually create the problems and wield real power within the economic system.
He argues that it is not individuals who create climate crises but corporations, international financial institutions such as the World Bank and compliant governments.
Blame-shifting. There’s lots more to that, but, let’s skip to the big notions
All of these problems speak to the lie at the heart of green consumerism.
The prevailing economic orthodoxy is wedded to the idea of perpetual growth, which is premised on the continual need to increase production and consumption.
This means hypercapitalism will never voluntarily accept reductions in production and consumption. To do so would be to accept a reduction in profits in a culture where profit is the only objective.
The only thing that will lead to a reduction in production and consumption is organised political resistance. But as Jensen notes, green consumerism has cleverly “redefined us from citizens to consumers, reducing our potential forms of resistance to consuming and not consuming”. Therefore we must reject green consumerism as a solution, for it is only through large-scale collective public resistance against corporate interests, international financial institutions and compliant governments that we can hope to manage the climate crisis.
Is this starting to sound more like a political movement towards Progressive (nice fascism) goals?
Therefore, we must organise, lobby, boycott, vote and vociferously protest. We must campaign for the tighter regulation of corporate power, for environmentally sustainable and equitable transport and housing systems, for higher taxes on the rich and corporates (reversing decades of tax cuts) to enable massive investment in renewable energy and climate-change mitigation and adaptation, for economic equity, and for a socially conscious instrumentalist state that is interested in equity and our long-term survival, not just short-term gain at any expense.
This is a monumental task given the hollowing out of the state via privatisation and deregulation and the hyperindividualism (to reject consumption we have to reject established social norms) that characterises the hypercapitalism of the neoliberal project.
In essence, bigger and bigger government with more and more control. Yet, these same idiots who follow along with these proposals never seem to see the downside in giving over their freedom to government. Because that’s what they’ve been brainwashed to believe. And, if it comes to fruition, they suddenly realize that this isn’t what they wanted. In a similar vein, this is why so many Democrats have abandoned the Democrat led states to head to Southern states. They don’t like the way the policies they supported were harming their own lives.
If you advocate for authoritarian government, don’t be surprised when you get it and it hurts.
