Not Much COP

Big intergovernmental gatherings like the G20, or, now, COP26 never produce anything substantially new.  They are talking shops, which at best rubber stamp decisions that have already been made elsewhere.  The current COP26 meeting in Glasgow is no different.  The main players have spent the last few weeks themselves reducing hopes of anything coming out of it to near zero, and it looks likely not even to meet those lowered expectations.

The real decisions on things like action to reduce carbon emissions come not from the gatherings of government ministers and bureaucrats, but from the decisions of big multinational corporations.  When governments started to commit to banning the production of new internal combustion engine vehicles by 2030, several years ago, it was only because the big car makers were already well advanced in their production of electric vehicles, with battery efficiency rising by around 30% a year, and prices falling by a similar amount.  Car makers will have switched the majority of their production to electric, if not all of it, well before 2030.  In fact, the main thing stopping the more rapid switch is the failure of governments to ensure the rapid roll-out of sufficient, reliable charging points, but as an indication of why its not governments that are the main player, here, that task has started to be taken on by the car companies, and the oil companies themselves.

The gatherings like COP26 are merely a façade, and an opportunity for politicians to engage in virtue signalling.  Its easy for politicians from any single country to say, "Well we are doing our bit, we would like to see more, done, but unless everyone agrees, we can't move forward."   For nearly 80 years governments have all said that they are each committed to getting rid of nuclear weapons, whilst during that same time the number of countries with them, and the amount held by each country has continued to increase to the extent that they could destroy the world several times over.

One of the biggest drivers of virtue signalling is the sensationalising 24 hour media.  They played the same role in relation to COVID.  The virtue signalling takes the place, and squeezes out, any room for common sense, or rational thinking.  So, for example, the media have made big play about the likely decision to give a licence for a new North Sea oil development, claiming that this indicates a lack of commitment to carbon reduction.  Does it?  Not at all.  As with any production, of anything, energy is required at various points, and carbon may be released.  But, the main issue in relation to oil, is not this production of the raw material itself, but its use as energy, to be burned in cars, boilers and so on.

Its this latter that is the cause of large scale carbon emissions, not the production of the oil itself.  Go back 300 years, and the main source of fuel was wood.  Was the production of wood, i.e. the growing of trees, a source of carbon emissions?  No, other than when forests burn, or when trees and leaves rot, and give off methane as well as carbon.  It was the burning of wood on domestic fires, or to fuel kilns, furnaces and so on that was the cause of carbon emissions at that time.  In fact, wood was a very inefficient fuel, which is why the return to log burners in homes, today, is a rather crazy fad.  When wood was replaced by coal, much less coal than wood was required, and it produced relatively less pollution, precisely because it burned hotter, and so was more efficient.  The reason pollution increased was not the switch from wood to coal, but the fact that the use of coal went along with the Industrial Revolution, so that a vast amount of additional energy was required.

But, the reason that the virtue signalling over the issuing of additional oil drilling licences is ridiculous is that a) oil and gas use for energy is not going to end overnight, b) oil and gas are used for other purposes than just energy production, just as was wood.  When wood was largely replaced by coal, as a source of energy, it did not mean that there was no longer a use for wood or forests.  Wood, in fact, had a far more valuable role to play for use in construction, for the production of furniture, for the production of paper, and so on.  So too with other fossil fuels.

Oil is not just used for burning, any more than was wood.  Oil and gas are used on a massive scale in the petrochemical industry for use in producing not only a massive range of plastics, which are of vital importance in all industries, and in the health service, but also in the production of a huge range of chemicals from fertilisers to pharmaceuticals.  The media insisting that no such licences be granted, seem to have forgotten their news story of only a few weeks ago that even sky high natural gas prices threatened to bring society to a halt, because it meant that fertiliser producers were not producing fertiliser, and so their bi-product of CO2 was not getting produced, bringing production across the food and other industries to a dead-stop!

Another similar example is the media focus on planning permission for a new mine in Cumbria.  As I understand it, the coal from the mine is proposed to be used in steel making.  To make steel, you need carbon, and the carbon comes from coal.  Unless you are going to propose a world without steel, it seems, therefore, that you are going to need to continue producing coal.  But, the media's virtue signalling is again ridiculous in simply focusing on short-term headlines, rather than any longer-term serious thinking.  One of the most significant new materials of recent decades has been carbon fibre.  It is both much lighter, and yet much stronger than steel.  It is used in things from F1 racing cars to cycles.  But, carbon is also used to produce carbon nanotubes.  Nanotubes are going to be one of the most important materials in the next few decades, with use in industry as well as in bioscience and medicine.  Finally, there is graphene, again made from carbon, and which will be used for the production of flexible screens, vital for wearable technology, which itself will form the basis of the personalised healthcare systems of the next decade and beyond.  It is also used for the production of membranes that allow salt water to be turned into drinking water without the use of the vast amounts of energy currently required.

The most obvious source of all of this carbon, the demand for which is going to rise massively, is coal!  And, similarly, as 3-D printing takes off in coming years, the requirement for huge ranges of new polymers, in turn produced by the petrochemical industry means that the demand for oil and gas is also going to rise sharply.  As with wood, burning such precious resources, required for these purposes will be seen to have been hugely wasteful.  The talk of stranded assets is nonsense, because, in the future, the demand for these raw materials is going to make them much, much more valuable than just something used to be burned!

A lot of the virtue signalling is based upon petty-bourgeois moralising.  The big polluters will have to face the representatives of the people of poor countries in danger of being overwhelmed by climate change, we are told.  And, what do they expect will be the consequence of that?  Those big polluters are not going to change their behaviour simply on the basis of such appeals.  Those making the appeals have no leverage.  The big polluters will only change their behaviour if it is advantageous for them to do so, and within a continuing global capitalist system that essentially means that it must be more profitable to engage in non-polluting rather than polluting behaviour.

In the 19th century, Britain faced repeated epidemics of cholera, and other such diseases, caused by poor sanitation and public health.  The country still had a large population that could be employed, even with repeated amounts of large-scale culling.  So, the capitalist class had little need to spend money to deal with the epidemics.  But, when an epidemic again swept Britain, the US, wanting to prevent its spread there, banned British ships from docking, requiring a two-week quarantine.  It severely disrupted British exports to the US, and overnight, Britain began to introduce legislation on sanitation and public health that brought the epidemics to a halt.

Engels notes in his later Preface to The Condition of The Working Class,

"Again, the repeated visitations of cholera, typhus, small-pox, and other epidemics have shown the British bourgeois the urgent necessity of sanitation in his towns and cities, if he wishes to save himself and family from falling victims to such diseases. Accordingly, the most crying abuses described in this book have either disappeared or have been made less conspicuous. Drainage has been introduced or improved, wide avenues have been opened out athwart many of the worst “slums” I had to describe. “Little Ireland” had disappeared, and the “Seven Dials” are next on the list for sweeping away. But what of that? Whole districts which in 1844 I could describe as almost idyllic have now, with the growth of the towns, fallen into the same state of dilapidation, discomfort, and misery. Only the pigs and the heaps of refuse are no longer tolerated. The bourgeoisie have made further progress in the art of hiding the distress of the working-class. But that, in regard to their dwellings, no substantial improvement has taken place is amply proved by the Report of the Royal Commission “on the Housing of the Poor,” 1885. And this is the case, too, in other respects. Police regulations have been plentiful as blackberries; but they can only hedge in the distress of the workers, they cannot remove it.”

(Preface to the English Edition of “The Condition ofthe Working Class in England)

This same thing is seen time and again in the development of capitalism.  Marx describes, for example, the fact that capitalism first arises in industry, in the towns.  As industrial capitalism develops in the towns, it places increasing demands on agriculture for raw materials, and subsequently for food.  For example, its the growth of textile industries in the towns that leads to additional demands for wool, which leads to landlords clearing estates, and giving over wide areas to sheep.  Marx describes how, as capitalist industry develops, these increasing demands for agricultural products leads the existing pre-capitalist agriculture, to have to increasingly overwork the land.  Eventually, the old peasant based production could not meet the needs of capitalist industry, and its only at that point, Marx says, that capital is led to have to enter agriculture itself, and to introduce the same kinds of capitalistic measures that it had pioneered in industry, in the towns in the previous centuries.  As I have demonstrated in recent posts, Lenin describes the same process in Russia, in the period following the 1861 Emancipation.

The process of development, the hitting of barriers and fetters, resulting in crisis, causing capital to engage in new technological developments that overcome those barriers and fetters, that extend the realm of capital to new areas, that create larger, more rational single markets within which a level playing field and common regulations and planning can operate, is the history of capitalist development over the last 600 years.  It is a crisis ridden form of development, and one that shows the need for its replacement by a more rational, socialist development, but until such Socialism arrives, it is the best we have.  Those that simply seek to hold it back offer no progressive solution.  As Lenin put it to the Narodniks and other moralists who baulked at such crises,

“This argument is a repetition of the typical error of romanticism, namely: the conclusion that since capitalism is torn by contradictions it is not a higher form of social organisation. Does not capitalism, which destroys the medieval village community, guild, artel and similar ties, substitute others for them? Is not commodity economy already a tie between the producers, a tie established by the market? The antagonistic character of this tie, which is full of fluctuations and contradictions, gives one no right to deny its existence.”

(A Characterisation of Economic Romanticism, Chapter 2, p 213)

Is The Government's Proposal on Electric Vehicles Bold? No

The government is proposing a ban on the sale of all new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030. It is being described as a bold move. Is it? No. 

Firstly, it allows the production of hybrids to continue for some time after that, and it means that existing petrol and diesel vehicles could remain on the roads for another 20 plus years, after 2030. Car makers, would continue to make money on those vehicles via dealer servicing, and supply of authentic parts, all of which are required in greater quantity the older a car becomes. But, in any case, car makers are already well on the way to making the switch to all electric anyway, though they will not say that, as they try to get government to provide as much subsidy in the interim as possible. 

Why anyone would buy a hybrid is a mystery to me, having looked into them. They are the worst of both world's. A hybrid has to carry around two engines, a conventional petrol/diesel, and the electric motor. The additional weight reduces performance and fuel economy. If you only make short journeys, its already better to go straight for all electric, because you don't need the petrol/diesel engine, and if you make longer journeys, any savings on the use of the electric motor are lost, because, most of the trip will use the petrol/diesel engine, whose fuel economy is considerably reduced by having to tote around the weight of the electric motor. It also means you lose space in the vehicle, as well as meaning the technology to coordinate the two is greater with also higher maintenance costs. Hybrids amount to virtue signalling, for people who cannot use a fully electric vehicle due to the current constraints on them of range, and lack of charging points. 

But, the range of electric vehicles is increasing each year, and governments will undoubtedly be led to either invest in a charging infrastructure themselves, or else will provide large subsidies to existing and new energy companies to do so. The big oil and energy companies are already investing in providing such a charging infrastructure, as they see the future, and the large profits they can make from it. If they, in cahoots with the carmakers, can get governments to fund it, that goes straight to their bottom line. Already, the government gives a 30% discount – up to £10,000 – on the price of the first electric car you buy, as well as a grant of £3,000 to put a charging point in to your house. 

Electric cars are already cheaper than petrol/diesel over a five year period, because their much lower running costs, more than offsets their higher initial purchase price. But, 40% of the value of an electric vehicle consists of its battery. Continual development in battery technology, means that the price of batteries has been falling by around 30% a year, with a similar increase in their effectiveness. That means that the initial purchase price of electric cars will soon drop below that of petrol/diesel too, as the effects of mass production and economies of scale take effect. Moreover, the majority of cars are now acquired on leases, as a form of modern day HP, rather than being bought. So, its going to be the case that car makers will have switched their production towards all electric vehicles long before 2030. 

The car makers and the energy companies will make huge profits from this shift to electric vehicles, and if they can get governments to fund a large part of the cost, under cover of appearing to be acting ethically, and radically, as part of so called Green New Deals, they will be highly delighted, because those subsidies go straight to their bottom line, and thereby to the dividends paid out to their shareholders. The energy companies will get the cost of the capital they need to advance for new charging stations, and all of the background infrastructure at a much reduced price due to government subsidies, which means that they benefit from a release of capital, and a higher rate of profit. In the meantime, they will make profits on the vast increase in electricity supplied, to charge all these vehicles, and at least, for a time, they will continue to make profits from the sale of fossil fuels to generate that electricity. But, as the existing energy companies move into renewables, like solar, wind and so on, the subsidies provided by governments for these types of energy, will also feed directly into their rate of profit. 

In 20 years time, very little energy will come from fossil fuels if any, other than in developing economies, but, by then, the oil and gas producers will not only be making huge profits from these other forms of energy, they will also be making huge profits from their existing oil and gas as use for other purposes. Oil and gas is far more useful as feedstock for the production of petrochemicals, and complex hydrocarbons used for the production of polymers, and so on. As material science develops new artificial materials like graphene, carbon nanotubes, and so on, existing fossil fuels will be in great demand as raw material for their production. As when coal replaced wood, as the main source of fuel, it didn't mean that the use value, or value of wood disappeared. On the contrary, wood became even more useful as raw material for construction, for the production of paper and so on. 

For the last thirty years “investment” has been the term given to what is actually only speculation. Investment actually involves advancing capital to accumulate additional industrial capital, in the shape of buildings, roads, infrastructure, machines, materials and workers. This is what businesses do, using the profits they create. No individual firm uses all its profits each year for this purpose, and so places the profits it does not use into the capital markets, so as to at least earn interest on it, as well as paying some of it to shareholders in interest/dividends. But, other firms, each year, need to invest more than is available from their profits for that year, and so they go into the capital markets to borrow, so using some of those profits of other firms. 

However, the majority of what is termed “investment” is no such thing. It is simply the actions of the owners of loanable money-capital, who buy up existing bonds and shares. That money goes not to fund any additional real investment, but goes simply to the existing owners of those shares and bonds. In Capital III, Engels wrote that eventually this money must find its way back into circulation in the real economy, because those individuals who sell their shares and bonds, get the money for them into their bank accounts, from where either they use it to consume, or to invest, or else the bank uses these deposits to provide loans to other to consume or to invest.

However, today, and indeed, during any period of inflating asset price bubbles, this is not the case, because the money can simply continue to go around in a never-ending paper chase pushing up the prices of assets, and of drawing ever new asset classes into this inflationary spiral. Rather than the money finding its way back into general circulation, the asset price inflation encourages money to flow out of general circulation into this speculation in assets, as no one wants to miss out on obtaining the capital gains produced by it. Indeed, now, not only is the speculation or to give it its proper description “gambling” described as “investment”, but these capital gains are themselves described as profits, giving the false impression that they represent some kind of self expansion of value, or the production of surplus value. 

As a result of this speculation in the guise of investment, huge swathes of economies have been underinvested, and that is particularly marked in the area of infrastructure, which is generally the preserve of state capital, financed by the issuing of government debt. In order to reduce government debt, spending on infrastructure was severely curtailed in many developed economies. It was developing, newly industrialising economies that had to spend most on such infrastructure spending, because without it, their industries could not develop. But, they had the advantage of being able to skip over some of the steps that developed economies had gone through. They could go straight to high speed motorways, to high speed, electrified railways, to mobile telephony and internet networks etc. 

But, now, across the globe, demands for Green New Deals are simply an ideological reflection of the growing needs of capital to massively increase infrastructure investment, both to meet current needs, and to make up for the fact that infrastructure spending was held back in favour of financial and property speculation for forty years. A World Bank Report last year suggested that, in the developing economies alone, investment in their major cities for such infrastructure, waste, renewable energy, public transport, water, electric vehicles, and green buildings, would soak up around $29 trillion by 2030. That is a lot of money that would have gone purely into speculation, pumping up asset prices that now must instead go into actual investment, with the equivalent value itself going into the real economy, as the money is used to buy all of the materials and so on required for this real investment, to pay the wages of the workers involved in the construction and so on. 

It also means that to fund this real investment, a huge amount of new debt has to be issued, and this increased supply of debt means that the prices of debt instruments, i.e. bonds, fall, causing yields on those bonds to rise, meaning that interest rates rise. This is coming at a time when spending to cover the economic damage caused by lockdowns, means that even more borrowing is undertaken, pushing interest rates higher still. In order to take advantage of virtue signalling, and the favourability of all things green, governments have proposed paying for this investment via Green Bonds. The bonds have to meet certain criteria, as with other forms of ethical investing, but obviously, speculators will not buy them, unless they offer the same kind of return as other bonds. 

The government in the Netherlands, for example, has issued a €6 bn. Green Bond to finance natural infrastructure spending, which, given the low lying nature of the country, is seen as vital to avoid flooding, as a result of climate change. Speculators obviously saw it as a good bet, because within a couple of hours it was oversubscribed by three times. Earlier this year, the German government issued a €6 bn. Ten Year Green bond that was five times oversubscribed, but many countries, from Fiji to France, have issued such Green Bonds, in the last year or so. The ICE Bank of America Merrill Lynch Green Bond Index has shown that the amount invested in bonds with an environmental impact has grown from $55bn in 2015 to $345bn by 31st. October last year. Between 2012 and 2018 cumulative issuance of green bonds totalled $140bn, across 28 markets. According to the IFC, that could increase to between $210bn and $250bn by 2021. So the Green Revolution, and Green investing is big business, meaning big profits, and big interest payments for those financing it. 

And, as that has increased, so has the inevitable expansion of derivatives, as a range of mutual funds are established to buy into the Green Market, whilst sucking in the money of retail speculators seeking total returns on their money. In Europe, there are now 29 of these funds, with assets under management amounting to nearly €6 bn. All of these bond funds have enjoyed positive returns so far of between 0.8% and 9.7% by the end of October 2019. Of course, many of the people putting money into these funds are workers, as well as money from their pension funds going into them, as well as directly into the purchase of the bonds. Yet, those workers have no democratic control over the way that money is used either as savers, or as workers employed in the various companies involved. That control is exercised by a tiny minority of shareholders. 

The biggest increase in such green bonds is, of course, in China and the rest of Asia. China needs to move away from its reliance on fossil fuels which it used as the basis of its industrialisation. It recognises that is not sustainable, and, as it looks to also be the supplier of energy technologies to the rest of the world, it needs to first acquire the economies of scale in such technology production that comes from developing them on a huge scale in its domestic economy.  More than 80% of recent issuance of Green Bonds by developing countries has been by China. East Asia and the Pacific region are responsible for 81% of the market. Green bonds have raised between $1.5m to $4.4bn, with an average issue size of $385m. Back by governments in these countries, about half of the bonds boast a formal credit rating, and nearly always investment grade.

As the world divides into three large competing blocs of North America, Europe and Asia, China may be limited in what it can sell to North America and Europe, as is already happening with ICT, but the new free trade area it has established with Japan and 14 others, means it will be well placed to dominate that arena, as well as to sell into Africa, the Middle-East, and Latin America, where its economic relations are already well established. 

This is the real context of the Green New Deal being proposed by Boris Johnson, as well as by Biden in the US, and similar proposals across Europe. It has nothing to do with any ethical or environmental concerns, but with simply protecting the interests of capital. Already, Britain and Europe are lagging behind in these developments, and risk being left behind by China, and its Asian partners. There is nothing bold about the Tories plans. If anything, they are too little, too late. 

Reply To Rory

This is a reply to Rory's comment on Michael Roberts Blog that I previously promised to provide. 

The sequence of comments can be traced back from the link provided. It can be summarised as follows. I argued that shutting down the global economy was reactionary. I argued that it was not surprising that catastrophists have been happy to see the global economy shut down, because, for years, they have been predicting that it would shut down as a result of some global economic crisis arising from The Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, or else, in the case of environmentalists that it would have to be shut down to avoid some Malthusian global ecological crisis. 

As an aside, on both these points, my position is that a global economic crisis is likely at some point, but it will not be a result of the Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, because, as Marx describes, crises of overproduction are caused by capital being overproduced relative to the social working-day, so that absolute surplus value cannot be expanded further, and, in conditions where relative surplus value can only be increased by carrying through a technological revolution, to introduce labour saving technology. We are not close to the condition where capital is overproduced relative to the potential social working-day, and so where a new technological revolution is required to raise relative surplus value. We are probably around 10-20 years from such a point, as a result of the long wave cycle being stretched out as a result of the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, and subsequent imposition of austerity to slow global growth, to avoid its repetition. 

On a global ecological crisis, it is, of course, always a possibility, but Malthusians have been promising that such a Biblical Flood would come to wash us away with our sins for more than 200 years, and it has repeatedly failed to materialise. On the contrary, capitalism has raised the level of science and of productivity repeatedly so as to drive the likelihood of such a catastrophe further and further away from us. Malthus predicted that population would grow faster than the potential for food production, but the opposite has happened. In the 1970's, catastrophists told us that oil was about to run out, but 50 years later, the world is awash in the stuff, and its cheaper than ever. Capitalism is a system that proceeds on the basis of crises, but at every stage it has raised its game to provide solutions to immediate problems, before those problems became an irreversible threat to the system itself. Moreover, many of those solutions have come from the very economic development that capitalism itself has brought with it. 

So Rory says, in response to this argument, and my reference to Colin Clark's work in the 1950's, showing that the world was capable of feeding itself, and to a higher level, many times over, 

“Yet, capitalism did not implement the more efficient methods scientists and other rational people were aware of because it’s not a system concerned with human need.” 

But, the first bit of that's not true, and the second bit is only partially true. Firstly, Malthus, Chalmers and Ricardo were all proved wrong by capitalism, because, as Marx showed, basing himself on the work of Anderson, there was no reason why capital in agriculture/primary production could not continue to raise productivity, and so produce more than enough food to meet rising demand. Moreover, it could do so, whilst reducing agricultural/primary product prices, a a result of this higher productivity. There was no law of diminishing returns. The main obstacle in that regard was not capital, but was landed property, and the effect of rent. Because rent is surplus profit, the existence of landed property always restricts the amount of capital that is invested in the land. Firstly, capital is only invested on the land if agricultural/primary product prices are high enough to ensure such surplus profits, so that the rent can be paid to the landlord. Secondly, especially where landlords imposed short lease periods, this acts as a disincentive to additional capital investment on the land, because, at the expiry of the lease, the landlord is the one who appropriates the fixed capital invested on the land, such as for drainage and irrigation, buildings and so on, and because these investments raise the output, and so profit, the landlord also uses this to demand a higher rent for the land, for the new lease period. 

So, its totally untrue to say that capital did not utilise scientific methods to raise productivity and raise output. It was the old feudal and peasant farming methods that failed to do so, and is why those opposing capitalism from these earlier perspectives are reactionary. Those opposing it from the perspective of Socialism are quite right to do so, but doing so simply by demanding Socialism Now, is Utopian, and thereby reactionary, because its divorced from current reality. Moreover, nearly all those opposing capitalist development from a catastrophist standpoint, are not doing so from a socialist perspective that demands increased levels of output to meet global needs, and that involves the kind of large-scale, socialised production upon which collective ownership can be based, but are doing so, from a reactionary perspective of seeking to turn back capitalist development, to slow it down, not speed it up. 

The biggest step forward in that regard was, in fact, the development of large-scale agricultural development in North America. There a relative shortage of labour meant that, from the beginning, agriculture was undertaken on a more capital intensive basis, and because there was no landed property in North America, farmers were able to make these investments free of the limitations imposed by rent. And, when landed property does arise in North America, as the land is gradually settled by these farmers, it is again the development of large, industrial scale agricultural that overcomes the problems of landed property, because the huge agribusinesses themselves are both productive-capitalist and landowner, pocketing profits in one pocket, and rents to themselves in the other. These businesses have invested massively in fixed capital to raise productivity. 

Nor is it entirely correct to say that capitalism is a system that is not driven by human need. Primarily, its true that capitalism is a system driven by profit, and by the need to accumulate capital, as a consequence of competition. But, it does not produce simply for the fun of doing so. There is no point producing surplus value, unless that surplus value can be realised, and, right at the start of his work, Marx outlines that a product, and consequently a commodity only has value, if it is also, for someone a use value, i.e. it meets someone's human need! Capitalism cannot produce profits, unless it first produces commodities that consumers want and have the ability to buy, i.e. that meet their human needs. In developed economies, it has done that remarkably successfully, as a consequence of the investment of capital, utilisation of the latest technologies and so on, so as to raise productivity, and reduce the values of those commodities. In fact, in most Western economies, it has managed to raise productivity and reduce values to such a degree that food accounts for only a minor component of the household budget of the majority of households, and on average about 30% of the food bought by households is actually thrown away. 

The problem for people in many poorer parts of the world is not that capitalism cannot produce enough food to feed them, but that they do not have the income to be able to buy the food they require, and their own peasant agricultural production is too low productivity to be able to produce the food required for their own subsistence. In other words, this is not a problem of capitalism being too developed, and a requirement to hold it back, or turn it back, but a problem of capitalism not being developed enough, and a need to speed it up. If capitalism in these areas were more developed, then the labourers, as wage labourers, would have higher incomes, the food production in these economies would take place itself on a developed capitalist basis, with higher levels of productivity, lower prices, and higher profits. The labourers would then be able to buy more and better food. A look at the process of capitalist development everywhere, starting in Britain, shows that to be the case, and more lately a look at what has happened as Chinese peasants left subsistence agriculture to become industrial wage labourers shows it to still be the case. The food consumption of those former peasants has risen dramatically now, as wage workers. 

Since 1980, the global workforce has doubled, and most of the increase has been in Asia. According to the ILO, the world labour force has grown by around a third in the first decade of this century alone. The number of workers employed in industry has risen by around 30% or about 150 million workers, the number employed in services has risen by 35%. This incessant demand for labour-power pushed up nominal and real wages significantly, at a global level. That was manifest in a sharp rise in global food demand, as the higher living standards of these workers was first translated into a better diet. The start of the new long wave boom after 1999 enhanced this process. In 2005, Chinese consumption of meat was 2.4 times what it was in 1990, milk 3 times, fruit 3.5 times, vegetables 2.9 times, fish 2.3 times, whilst its consumption of cereals, mostly rice, fell by 20%. The large rise in demand from China, and other developing economies, was part of the reason for the spike in global food prices, at the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008. 

But, that spike in prices, also led to a spike in capital investment in food production, just as similarly, the rise in other primary product prices led to a spike in investment in production of those other commodities. And, again, that investment far from being faced with diminishing returns, once it had fed through, saw, instead, falling marginal costs of production, and falls in global prices of all these primary products from copper and iron ore, to oil and milk. Now, you can complain that there are millions of people across the globe who do not have access to many of these things, or cannot currently buy them, but that is certainly not down to some metaphysical incapacity of the globe to produce them. Nor is the answer to that inability of millions to be able to buy these commodities to actually reduce global productive capacity, which is what you appear to be advocating. Rather it is to increase that productive capacity. That is what Socialism would have to do to meet the needs of all these millions, and until we actually get Socialism, it is what we require capitalism itself also to do. It is what we should demand that it do. Certainly we should not demand that it does the opposite by reducing or stopping production, which will indeed be catastrophic for everyone. 

“Capitalism does not have a legacy of deploying the most efficient technologies in any proactive, forward-thinking sense, just the opposite.” 

Quite true, capitalism is not Socialism, but we do not have Socialism, and so the next best alternative is the capitalism we do have, and its gradual process of transformation into Socialism. Just because, capitalism is not perfect, is not Socialism, is no reason to say “Stop The World I Want to Get Off”, because that simply leads you into something far, far worse. Our task as socialists is rather to welcome the continued development of capitalism, and to intervene in that process to try to drive the forward movement down the path that is most favourable to the working-class, and development of Socialism. That path certainly does not lead back from where we have just come from! 

“Ecological failures on a global scale do not come with “do-overs”. There is a reservoir of natural capital that does not immediately bounce back just because international capital suddenly realizes human beings need a habitat” 

Well, a lot of ecological disasters were caused by modes of production prior to capitalism, and that continues to be the case. The creation of large desert areas occurred long before capitalism, for example. Capitalist production, because it precedes capitalist agriculture by some considerable time, means that the demands of industry placed increased burdens on an agriculture that was not fitted to meet them, leading to over farming and so on. But, that is a consequence of the inefficient methods of pre-capitalist agriculture not of capitalist agriculture. When that agriculture reaches a point that it can no longer meet the needs of this rapidly growing industry, capital itself is led to intervene in agricultural production and revolutionise it. And, it is precisely because large-scale capital does recognise that land is a valuable resource, especially when it has invested vast amounts of fixed capital in it, that it does seek to curate it in a way that the small scale peasant farmer never could. In fact, it does so in the same way that this large scale industrial capital recognised the need to curate its supply of labour-power, by creating a welfare state. 

In the 1950's, capitalism in developed economies introduced Clean Air Acts, and huge swathes of polluted land and water was cleaned up. It did that proactively to improve the health of its main resource, human labour-power, and it was able to do it, because the level of capitalist development had provided the economic resources to do so. Similarly, capitalist development, and its development of science and technology led to the development of more efficient engines that utilise oil more effectively, it has developed alternative energy sources, such as solar power that, in the developed economies, are now replacing fossil fuels. The development of electric vehicles means that the use of fossil fuels, as energy sources, is likely to continue to decline, and begin to decline rapidly, not only before the oil itself runs out, but before burning it causes irreversible ecological damage. 

“To have a shot at staying below a 2C rise in global average temperature those emissions need to be reduced by 50% in twenty years while population and living standards increase, putting pressure on energy demand still dominated by fossil fuels. There’s no way that will occur within the logic of capitalism.” 

But, it already is happening, and the more profitable alternative energy becomes, the more it will happen. Will it keep average global temperature down enough to avoid a 2 degree rise? I don't know, but it may be that the cost of achieving that, by reducing output is greater than the benefit, especially if the additional growth comes from the development of the less developed areas of the world, such as Bangladesh. It may well be the case that, for, say, Bangladesh, the best hope lies not in trying to avoid relatively small amounts of global warming that may be unavoidable, but in developing its economy, so as to be able to deal with the consequences of that global warming, in the way that a relatively prosperous Netherlands was able to use its prosperity to build dams, drainage systems, and so on, and thereby to even reclaim areas of sea to usable land. 

“If that would be possible under production for profit, international capital would have already been deployed to areas most at risk from global warming” 

But, as stated above, where its profitable to do so it is. In Britain and elsewhere, the capitalist state also uses revenues to provide flood defences, and so on. Moreover, your argument starts from the wrong perspective. Socialism, would, in the same way that a nation state uses its resources to provide such measures against flooding, utilise its resources globally to that effect. But, your argument makes the assumption that this Socialism already exists as an alternative to what actually exists, which is capitalism! Given the current non-existence of Socialism, we have to deal with the reality of the capitalism that does exist. Your position, therefore, amounts to saying capitalism isn't perfect, and so we will seek an answer that depends on something far worse, i.e. a holding back or turning back of capitalism! 

“and in developed countries, there would be something akin to full-employment with a drastically reduced but more efficient “work week”. It would’ve happened decades ago when the scientists were warning about this exact scenario.” 

Why would that be the case? There is no reason why capitalism that seeks to maximise profits would do that. 

Again you seem to have lapsed into an argument that says capitalism isn't Socialism, something we all already know. The question is not about whether capitalism is Socialism, and could or would bring about the same conditions that Socialism would, or in the same way, but is about the reality that what exists is capitalism, and the answers to the problems that creates is not by looking backwards, which is what the demands to “hold back”, or “turn back” capitalism amounts to, but is by looking forward, to welcoming the continued forward movement of capitalism, and engaging in the class struggle as part of that forward movement so as to strengthen the progressive elements of it, to strengthen the position of the working-class within that movement, and thereby to facilitate the transition to Socialism.

How Should The Government Deal With Flooding

Once again we have properties being flooded.  Once again we have hand wringing, and calls for something to be done, including bailing out those who knowingly bought properties in flood risk areas.  What should the government do?

First of all, the government should ban development in flood plains, and alongside rivers and other locations with any significant risk of flooding.  Secondly, it should hold local authorities accountable for having given planning permission for developments in flood plains, and others areas of significant risk of flooding.  People who buy properties in flood plains and other such high risk areas, really should take responsibility for their own actions, and not expect others to bail them out, when their failure to consider risks comes back to bite them.  Someone who buys a house with a nice, pleasant, riverside location enjoys the private benefit of that, on a pleasant Summer day, when they look out on their surroundings, and that private benefit is not shared with the rest of us, such as the resident of a Council tower block in a grimy inner city location.  Yet, when that riverside property gets flooded, the occupant expects that the losses, instead of being privatised, as with the benefit, should instead be socialised, so that the tenant of the tower block must subsidise them via their taxes! 

This is rather like all of the people who bought shares in banks and other companies prior to 2008, and were happy to pocket the private benefits of the dividends and capital growth of those shares, but who, when those companies went bust, expected the rest of us to bail them out for their reckless speculation.  Its called moral hazard.  But, the state and the local state cannot totally escape their responsibility in that regard.  Someone who goes into a restaurant where hygiene standards are visibly below what they ought to be, should not be surprised if they get food poisoning, but we also expect the state to protect us against food producers poisoning us with the food they sell us, and we should likewise expect the state to impose minimum standards in relation to housing provision too.  All too often, local authorities grant planning permission for developments that are sub-standard, both because they are in flood risk areas, because they are on unsuitable land, liable to subsidence, let alone that they allow houses to be built that are too small, and crowded on to insufficient land areas.  They do so in order to benefit from the money they get from developers in Section 106 Agreements and so on.

Thirdly, the government should stop wasting money on flood defences.  Billions of pounds is spent on flood defences that make the problem of flooding overall worse.  At best, they protect some properties, but only at the expense of transferring the problem to other properties up and downstream that otherwise would not have been affected.  Often the flood defences do not even really protect the properties they are designed to protect.  They limit the extent to which rivers may break their banks, but they then result in water going into the subsoil, which finds its way into aquifers, as well as into drainage channels, which then can erupt as ground water, or come up inside properties via their own drainage and sewers.  It acts to create underground streams that erode the subsoil and structure, so that a longer term problem with subsidence is created.

But, more immediately, flood protection simply acts like a big game of Whack-a-Mole, pushing water from one place to another.  It prevents water from being dissipated into natural flood plains, which then acts as further encouragement for builders to build on them.  The more construction takes place on these flood plains so that they become concreted over, the more even rainfall in to these areas, instead of being slowed down, by trees and vegetation, and being absorbed into the water table, is instead fed out, rapidly, into drainage channels that, in turn, feed quickly into other water courses and rivers, so that water is quickly dumped into a small number of locations that then overcome the river banks, causing further flooding.  By changing the natural absorption of the water into flood plains, the natural build up of silt is also disturbed, which again results in flooding, as channels become clogged.

Instead of wasting billions on flood prevention schemes that do not work, the government should instead use the money to build large numbers of council houses, in areas where no such risk exists.  Then, again, instead of bailing out property owners, whose properties are bound to be flooded again and again, it should offer them alternative accommodation in a council house.  It would be up to the property owner whether or not to accept that offer, but, if they refuse, they should not expect that the rest of us should bail them out for their own private choices.  The consequence would then be reflected in the market prices of properties in those locations, and in insurance premiums.

Over time, the property prices in these high risk areas should fall to very low levels reflecting the risk they present.  In that way, it becomes possible for such properties to be bought up by the government, and the land returned to being a flood plain, which is the best flood protection there can be for everyone else.

Labour Manifesto – Environment

Labour says, 

“We will maintain and continuously improve the existing EU standards of environmental regulation.” 

As an objective perfectly admirable, except that given the much larger size, and proximity of the EU, whatever Britain does to combat pollution itself will be overshadowed by what happens in the EU. Moreover, if Britain leaves the EU, which is presumably the goal of Labour's commitment to negotiate its own Brexit deal, it will already be facing a large competitive disadvantage with its largest and closest trading partner. Lumping further additional costs on to British business, compared to EU businesses, by these proposed higher standards, will not only act to undermine UK growth, and so the tax revenues etc. that are required to fund additional environmental improvements, but it will also lead to businesses migrating from the UK to the EU. The idea that any of these major issues can be dealt with by the small British state going it alone is simply fanciful. 

The Manifesto says, 

“Labour will introduce a new Clean Air Act, with a vehicle scrappage scheme and clean air zones, complying with World Health Organisation limits for fine particles and nitrous oxides.” 

But, trying to police such measures is next to impossible, and costly. Fifty years after smokeless zones were introduced, and we got rid of coal fires, we now have every new, and nearly new, development littered with log burners, and multi-fuel burners, churning out choking pollutants. Far simpler to just ban such polluting devices in the first place. But, again introducing such regulations is only rational on a larger scale, such as an EU wide basis. Higher standards for any form of energy production, or engine only make sense on an EU wide basis, because otherwise, producers of such equipment have to produce to different standards for different markets, raising costs. 

Labour says, 

“We will provide an extra £5.6 billion in funding to improve the standard of flood defences and respond to the increased risk of flooding, prioritising areas at risk in North West England, Yorkshire and the East Midlands that have been neglected by Conservative investments.” 

But, flood defences are a waste of money, and counterproductive. In the US, where large scale flood defences were built along the Mississippi, and other rivers, they have started to be dismantled. The reason is that all they do is to prevent rivers from naturally flooding into their flood plains. They send increasing volumes of water downstream so that they cause these downstream areas to flood where they never did in the past. That appears to be what has happened recently in South Yorkshire, for example. The flood defences which prevent rivers flooding into their natural flood plains not only have these deleterious effects on other areas, but they also encourage builders to build in the flood plains. When houses get flooded in these areas, because, often, insurers will not insure the properties, the householders then expect to be made good by the taxpayer. 

This is just a repeat of what has happened with the banks and the financial crisis. It is an encouragement of moral hazard, and reckless behaviour. The owners of these houses, often expensive houses, because of their pleasant, riverside locations, enjoy the private benefits of such ownership, but, they then demand not to pay the cost of that ownership, so that the cost is then socialised, in the same way that the capital gains of the financial speculators are privatised, whereas their capital losses were socialised via the bailing out of the banks, and reflation of asset prices via QE. In effect, it is the taxpayer who lives in Grenfell Tower, or some other less desirable location, who picks up the tab for the reckless decisions of others to buy expensive houses in a flood plain, which ultimately means that it is the builders who sell those houses that are bailed out. 

Around the coast, such as at Fairbourne, the rationale has been accepted that fighting against nature is an expensive folly. Rather than wasting large amounts of money on flood defences, it would be better to use that money to be building the new council houses we need, and the other infrastructure, and to do so in places that do not require flood defences and so on. Its not as though Britain has a shortage of available land on which to build new housing developments.  Currently, residential properties account for just 1% of the land mass.  It would be better to use resources to be migrating communities, over a period, away from such locations, and into areas away from flood and other environmental risks. 

In addition, a better use of the resources would be to build additional reservoirs, to absorb excess water, so that we can begin to avoid the perennial problems of months of heavy rainfall followed by the introduction of hose pipe bans, if the weather ever does manage to have a few dry days during the Summer. 

A further problem has been created by the policy of high density housing. Putting as many houses on to the smallest pieces of land possible, usually amidst already existing developments, with little green space available on such developments, often also with no gardens, or only the tiniest gardens, means that rainfall has no soil to sink into. It runs rapidly off roof tops and gutters on to concrete and other surfaces, thereby flooding into drains and sewers, many of which are no longer regularly maintained, so that flash flooding is increased, and when the water does get into water courses, it, thereby, hits them in larger, more sudden volumes, causing streams and rivers to flood. If Labour wants to avoid that problem, then ending the policy of building on brownfield sites should be a start. Turn them into green spaces that can absorb water to soak into the water table slowly. Limit the size of new developments to no more than 250 houses, and ensure that each house has a minimum size of garden front and back. Front gardens should be no less than 70 square metres, and back gardens no less than 100 square metres. Each development should be separated from others by a mini-green belt around it, amounting to a quarter to a half mile, comprising open meadow, and copses. 

The Manifesto says, 

“We will embark on an ambitious programme of tree planting, with both forestry and native woodland species.” 

Labour's tree planting programme has been ridiculed, with claims that it amounts to planting 200 trees a minute, 24 hours a day. In fact, its not particularly ludicrous. If 200 people are involved in the programme, its only 1 tree a minute each. If 1,000 are involved only 1 tree every five minutes. Given Labour's proposals to establish a number of new national forests and parks, where its quite possible that more than 1,000 people will be employed, and that they will be using the latest arboricultural equipment, to plough and plant, what it actually amounts to is highly practical, especially given that Labour proposes to pay farmers etc., to do some of this planting. 

More importantly, its not clear that this is a good use of all that land. More trees and forests are indeed required for other purposes, such as biodiversity, but some of the land should also be devoted to increasing the acreage of land based wind turbines. They are not only cheaper, and quicker to erect than offshore wind turbines, but it has been shown that an acre of such turbines reduces CO2 levels more than does an acre of trees. 

“We will establish a new environmental tribunal to ensure that administrative decisions are consistent with environmental and nature-recovery obligations.” 

This is a recipe for NIMBYISM, and delay. If the government is elected to carry out its programme, and local councils are elected with appropriate planning powers, also committed to implementing a strategic plan, they should be enabled to just get on with it. There will always be some special interest group, otherwise, who will find reasons why nothing should ever happen. 

Labour says, 

“A Labour government will maintain agricultural and rural structural funds but repurpose them to support environmental land management and sustainable methods of food production. 

We will invest in more county farms to replace those lost, and will work with agricultural organisations to increase access into farming for new entrants.” 

This just sounds reactionary; an equivalent of its reactionary position of supporting inefficient small business as against large business. It shows again, why continued membership of the EU is necessary. Britain's food requirements are more easily and rationally provided for by the much larger land mass of the EU, and its generally more favourable climate conditions. Trying to prop up UK agricultural production is a bit of a fool's errand, and waste of money, similar to trying to prop up high street shops in the age of online shopping. Britain will, of course, continue to be an agricultural producer, but the agricultural production it requires is not a reactionary reversion to inefficient methods of small scale, low intensity production, but the adoption of large scale industrial farming, using the latest technologies. 

The vast amount of land is in the hands of a tiny number of very large landlords, such as the Prince of Wales, Duke of Westminster and so on. Labour should adopt the policy put forward by radical Ricardians in the early 19th century of the nationalisation of land. Only in that way, can large-scale rational land use be planned. The rents from the land would then flow to the state, thereby reducing the amount of tax that the state has to levy, so enabling greater capital accumulation. Land never belonged to anyone to begin with, but was stolen by individuals from society, so there is a good argument for nationalisation without compensation. That is what a Workers' Government would do. But, we are talking about a Labour government, not a Worker' Government. As a compromise, therefore, Labour could offer to pay a tenth of the total rental the government collects, to the former landowners, for their lifetime. That avoids any upfront costs to the government of taking over the land. 

The Manifesto states, 

“Labour will introduce A Right to Food. We will end ‘food bank Britain’. We will ensure everyone has access to healthy, nutritious, sustainably produced food.” 

But, this seems to completely miss the point. As Labour says, a quarter of all food purchased is wasted. We have the cheapest food ever in Man's history. The problem that Labour identifies “an epidemic in food-related ill health, obesity, malnutrition and diabetes” is not due to food being too expensive or unavailable. It is largely due to it being very cheap, and, in the form of fast food, all too available. Its easy to see why many people resort to fast food. If you are working several jobs to earn enough to live, then come home to have to look after your kids, cooking is not the first thing on your mind. That is why a large part of the solution is not related to cheaper food, and so on, but is to be found in a higher Minimum Weekly Wage, and a reduction in the Working Week. But, its not the whole solution. 

I recently went for my annual health check up. The nurse said I had the blood pressure of a teenager, and the resting pulse of an athlete. Not surprising, given that I do not drink or smoke, and that, as she went through my exercise routine with me, it too is that of someone in their 30's. But, my kids have also been given that positive roll model by me and my wife too. They do not work multiple jobs, do not have kids to look after and so on. On the contrary, they still live with us. Yet, both are overweight. My youngest son, indeed, used to be super fit, having trained in Lau Gar Kung Fu with me from when he was six up to when he was 22. 

This is clearly a wider societal problem, and much more complex than the availability of cheap, healthy foods. In the 1960's, we used to imagine the future in which, the time taken for eating could be reduced by just having a pill that provided all the nutrition required. Today, eating and drinking has become a major social arena for leisure and entertainment. When I was young, entertainment involved burning off hundreds of calories, playing football during the day, and dancing at night. Today, it involves consuming hundreds of calories eating fast food during the day, and drinking alcohol at night. 

We have TV full of food programmes of one sort or another, but their main function is not to teach people how to cook cheap healthy meals, but is itself a form of passive entertainment, encouraging people to sit in doors on their settees watching this or that celebrity cook, whilst nibbling on their nachos, or the pizza they have just had delivered. 

“We will set maximum sustainable yields for all shared fish stocks, redistribute fish quotas along social and environmental criteria and, if people vote to leave the EU, require the majority of fish caught under a UK quota to be landed in UK ports.” 

But, what will be the point of that? The EU migrant food processing workers will have gone home, so that, as with the fruit and vegetables now rotting in the fields, because there are no migrant workers to pick them, the fish will also rot. Moreover, if Britain is outside the EU, then the EU will impose large tariffs on UK landed fish, of around 45%, so that it will be impossible for UK fishing companies to sell their production in the EU profitably. The EU will not abstain from imposing those tariffs unless the UK agrees to opening up its fishing waters to EU fleets. 

If Labour wants to improve recycling, as well as to free up the time of individuals, it should scrap the multitude of recycling schemes imposed on households by local councils, which transfers the cost, time and responsibility from the Council to the individual. The multitude of waste bins, recycling bins, and rules that households have to follow are an absurdity. Walk along the streets of any estate, and you will see more litter than ever scattered around, because the various boxes, always end up getting blown over, opened up by animals and so on. From an economic perspective, this is the very opposite of obtaining the benefits of economies of scale. In Germany, the responsibility is placed much more on the local authority to undertake the recycling. It means that each household can simply put all its waste into one bin, and then large-scale, high-tech investment at council recycling plants sorts through all of the waste, and separates it accordingly. 

As a County Councillor some years ago, I went on a visit to one of the council's recycling plants and noticed what a farce it is, because all of the different types of waste were tipped into various large skips, but then someone had to go round each of these skips and manually check that nothing extraneous had been deposited in it. Total lunacy. 

“We will invest in three new recyclable steel plants in areas with a proud history of steel manufacturing.” 

Again, this is total fantasy outside the EU. Before even the formation of the EEC, Europe created the European Coal and Steel Community, as a post-war example of international social-democracy, of the need to introduce planning and regulation on an increasing scale. Any rational future for steel, as with every other large-scale industry, requires planning and regulation on an EU wide basis. That is why Labour's proposals for Brexit are themselves a reactionary absurdity.

More From Less - Andrew McAfee

Alan Greenspan used to say that if it was possible to weigh the US economy, it would be getting lighter.  Greenspan was making a point that I have been making for more than a decade.  That is that as modern capitalist output increases, the mass of materials involved in the production of it is not just getting relatively smaller, but is now also getting absolutely smaller.  This is the opposite of the condition that Marx described in his Law of The tendency for The Rate of Profit To Fall.

In that Law, Marx sets out that, as fixed capital replaces manual labour, the productivity of labour rises.  Marx was dealing with economies in which the physical production of material commodities dominated.  This rise in productivity is manifest in the fact that a given mass of labour processes ever larger masses of raw material.  The labour is the source of new value production, and thereby of surplus value.  The raw material represents circulating constant capital.  So, as a given quantity of fixed capital and of labour processes an ever increasing quantity of raw material, this means that the proportion of the value of final output accounted for by fixed capital (wear and tear), and by labour, declines, whilst the proportion accounted for by raw material progressively increases.  As the proportion of raw material rises relative to the value creating substance - labour - so this means that c rises relative to s, the surplus value, so that the rate of profit falls.

Marx himself recognised a number of factors that counteracted this tendency, which he said was, in any case very small, and only visible over long periods of time.  One factor that Marx noted was that the same technology that brings about this rise in productivity, also brings about changes in the materials that are used, and in the way those materials are used.  New materials are introduced that are cheaper, or more durable and so on than previous materials.  Ways of using materials that reduces waste are introduced, waste is used to produce biproducts and so on.  But, new ways of using existing materials are introduced that means fewer of them are required.  For example multiple condensing, high-pressure boilers meant that a given amount of coal would produce ever increasing amounts of power.

What Greenspan was reflecting was the fact that now, new technologies, particularly materials technology means that its possible to get more bang for your buck.  The same output can be produced, not just with less labour, and less fixed capital (which has itself become ever more productive as new technologies have replaced older technologies), but also with less raw material.

This data is set out in Andrew McAfee's new book, More From Less.   McAfee sets out that the US now produces more industrial output than in the past, but does so whilst consuming less steel and other raw materials.  What is more it does so without using more energy either.  McAfee has made a wager that in ten years time, the US will be using less energy than it does today, no matter how large its economy has become.  His bet is based upon this same principle that rapidly improving technology means that more output can be produced both with fewer raw materials, and with less energy to process them.

This argument is not even taking into consideration the argument I have set out elsewhere that a 80% of the economy today is involved in service industry, which does not process raw materials.  It is stating that even if manufacturing output itself expands considerably, the increased output will not require more raw materials or more energy to achieve it.

I described this basic argument more than ten years ago,  That is today its not just a matter of the use of new materials like carbon fibre in place old, such as steel, or fibre optic cable in place of copper cable, but that entirely new types of products replace old types of products, and these new products, themselves often multifunctional, replace older types of products that required far more materials for their production.

Take a TV, in the 1950, even with tiny screens, they came in large wooden frames, with large speakers; the screen itself was a large chunk of glass at the front of a cathode ray tube, and the electronics behind it involved a multitude of glass valves that consumed large amounts of energy.  Today, a 55" LED Smart TV uses only a fraction of the materials used in a 1950's TV, and a fraction of the energy to power it.  But, it provides far more facilities than a 1950's TV, not juts in terms of colour, size and quality of picture, but access to Satellite, Internet and so on.  Or take an old Bakelite land line telephone as they existed up to the 1980's.  In the 1980's, the first mobile phones were introduced that were themselves like house bricks, but each year they got smaller, and more powerful and functional.  Today's smart phone uses a fraction of the materials of a 1980's land line phone, despite the fact that its not just a phone, but a camera, an entertainment platform, a means of accessing the Internet and so on.  Moreover, the infrastructure required to service a mobile phone network uses a fraction of the materials that were required to service the old landline telephone network.

McAfee's book is a good antidote to the various catastrophist theories, whether of the environmentalists, or the prophets of capitalist collapse due to the law of falling profits.

Buncefield

Three firms were found guilty over the Buncefield Oil Depot explosion three years ago as the BBC reported today - Buncefield.

At the time I wrote a blog about the events, which is as relevant today.

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I was watching the pictures, of the effects of the explosion, at the oil storage facility, in Henel Hempstead, today, like many other people. I don't know the area, where the storage depot was, but I guess its not a leafy, middle class suburb. I know, from having sat on a Planning Committee, that whenever applications, for anything that might be environmentally hazardhous, dirty or unsightly, comes along a strange red (or probably blue) mist seems to cloud the vision of planning officers and Councillors alike.



Whenever an application for something like this is submitted, for some area out in the country, planning officers reel out all the objections to spoiling the countryside, Tory Councillors, who are often elected from these areas by a few voters and some sheep, of course, are outraged that their constituents should have to come into contact with anything so working class, and Labour politicians, even if for the best environmentalist reasons, dislike the idea of despoiling the Green Belt too. Yet, despite the fact that, often, for facilities such as this oil storage depot, out in the wilds is the best place for them, where they pose little risk to anyone, the same planners and politicians have no qualms about siting dangerous facilities in the midst of, or at least close to, working class areas, where, presumably, they think people already have a completely shitty environement so shitting it up a bit more won't matter. The same is true about the Government's policies for cramming even more houses or businesses on to inner city, brown field sites, when, in fact, what needs to happen, to these sites, is for them to be greened up, to provide a better environement for people stuck inside built up towns and cities, to give kids somewhere to play, and to provide a "green lung" to improve air quality.

Its not even a matter of people being given a backhander by the firms that want to site these facilities in working class areas, its more a matter that the idea that workers can be shat on from a great height is taken for granted. The companies often have economic reasons for wanting to site them in these areas (e.g. because they are close to customers) as well as knowing they are more likely to get approval for an application there than in the countryside (because especially in run down working class areas, where residents have little history of organising and standing up for themselves, they will not put up a fight, whereas, out in the country, the middle class residents will, and the local Tory candidate will give the directors grief), and planning officers go along for many of the same reasons (plus they are more likely to live in the leafy suburbs than on a run down estate).

Workers should not count on any of these people having a change of heart. They have to organise on the etsates through their own organisations to oppose such developments through direct action if (as it usually is)necessary. They need to make links with the Trade Unions in the firms involved to gain support, to link up the concerns of workers in these industries over Health and Safety with their own concerns in that regard.

Ash & Cash

Watching the coverage of the chaos, caused by the Icelandic volcano, over the last few days, has caused me to consider a number of things. Firstly, what does this tell us about our reliance on air travel - a question environmentalists may have something to think about. Secondly, it made me see, yet again, the ability of the media to shape public discussion. All discussion has been around whether the State, has done a good or bad job, in dealing with getting people back home. There has been no discussion of whether, in fact, the State had that responsibility in the first place. Thirdly, and intimately related to the first two, is that it has demonstrated that air travel is way too cheap, and is so because the full costs of flying are not reflected in the price.

The first question is, of course, a huge area for discussion, and not one I could adequately deal with here. But, I want to deal with the other two together. If I get in my car, to drive somewhere, there are various costs that I have to bear. In actual fact, most transport economists have known for decades that, even here, the full costs are not borne by the motorist. The costs of environemntal pollution, the costs of policing the roads, the costs of healthcare for accidents etc. are not at all covered by the private motorist in the tax they pay etc. But, the motorist does cover some of that cost, as well as the other direct costs of motoring. The private motorist also has to take out Insurance to cover other unforeseen costs. Although, they do not have to take out breaakdown cover, many do, and, if they don't, and their car breaks down, they do not expect the state or someone else, to cover the cost of them getting to their destination.

If I book a train journey, then I expect the train company to get me to my destination, and if there are leaves on the line, I expect them to lay on buses instead, and so on. According to EU rules, airline companies have some similar obligations. If passengers are left stranded, the company should provide them with food and accommodation. It is clear that some companies, due to the length of time that passengers have needed to be accommodated, have not been fulfilling this requirement. All of them have complained that the cost of doing so is threatening them financially, and are demanding, that the rules be revised, to deal with such situations. None of them have had a legal requirement to ensure that passengers could be returned home by alternative arrangements, and none of them appear to have made any attempt to do so. Instead, that responsibility has been passed from the Profit & Loss of the companies - and thereby its shareholders, on to the backs of the State, and thereby to you and me the taxpayer.

But, as a socialist, there seems something very unfair, about the idea that some low paid worker, who cannot afford any foreign holiday, but who pays tax, whether Income Tax, N.I. or VAT, should, thereby, cover the costs incurred by people who have been able to afford a holiday on the other side of thee world! Still less to cover the costs of business travellers, whose air fares are often as much as a low paid worker earns in six months. Why should the state be responsible for picking up the bill that should rightfully fall upon the airline companies to esnure that they get their passengers to their destination? After all, the airline companies know who all those passengers are, they should have some idea where they are and where they are going. Logistically, it makes far more sense for them to deal with getting them home, than for the State, which cannot possibly know the who, where, and when of such a logistical nightmare, even with all of the growth of the Big Brother state. Why should it be respoonsible for doing that when it is not so responsible for any other form of transport?

Of course, if the airline companies did have to meet that reponsibility, the cost of air travel would rise substantially. Either, the companies would have to build up their own reserves, to cover such costs, as and when they occurred, or, more rationally, they would need to take out insurance to cover such an eventuality, and, given the massive, and almost open ended, degree of exposure that insurance companies ould be subject to, in the event of an event like the current one or worse, the insurance premiums would be significant. The result would have to be that the cost of air travel rose substantially. But, would that be a bas thing. Should we not actually have to judge the cost of air travel, against other alternatives, on a rational basis of the real costs? What, in fact, we have had is competition between airlines that has driven costs down by cutting corners. That is the real basis of the BA dispute. And, for passengers, not only does it open up the problems we see now, but it has serious implications for passenger safety.

Of course, the reality is that, given where we are, there is no alternative but for the State to have to try to get people back home, just as in the case of houses built in a flood plain getting flooded, no socialist would simply say "Its your fault for buying a house there", or "its the responsibility of the insurance company". The point is, we should try to not be in the kind of situation we are in. The cost advantages of flying, by not including all the costs, have to be addressed, just as the cost advantages for builders of building on flood plains have to be addressed - for example by demanding from them a bond to cover the cost of future flood damage, and so on.

If the capitalist State has a role to play it is in ensuring that private Capital has to properly reflect these costs in prices, it is not to simply bail out the private Capitalists when such costs manifest themselves, and we should not let the Capitalist Media shape the debate to suggest that it is.

Adaptation

It seems I've been watching a lot of Tony Robinson on TV. Over the last few weeks, I've been watching his Man On Earth series about how climate change over the history of Man's time on the planet has affected his existence. The basic message is, environmental change, even dramatic change, is nothing new. Man has survived it, and in some cases thrived because of it. The other central message is that where Man tried to either ignore the change, or else to prevent it, he failed; where Man adapted to it, he survived, and often prospered. In fact, as he demonstrated, in his last programme of the series, in South America, it was the decision to establish elaborate hydraulic and water management systems that allowed some, not only to survive, but to build an impressive Empire, on the basis of the advantages it gave, over others, when drought came. The idea is not new. Marx and Engels, amongst others, wrote about the role of such systems in creating the role of the bureaucratic state in the Asiatic Mode of Production. Although that Mode of Production ultimately became a fetter on productive development, compared with the potential of Capitalism, upon it arose fantastic civilisations, in India and China, that lasted for thousands of years, at a time when Northern Europeans were still living in caves and running around in animal skins.

In contrast, as Engels describes, one of the reasons that the North American Indians remained at the level of hunter-gatherers was the fact that they had access to adequate food supplies, and in the main temperate climates. Only a few progressed to the stage of animal husbandry. The relation between climate and development cannot be seen as a simple one. The first civilisations that arose in Mesopotamia and in the Nile Valley, were able to do so, largely because the favourable climate, and fertile soils, enabled Man to cater for his basic needs with little expenditure of labour-time, leaving time free to investigate the world around him, to gaze at the stars etc, and to spend time building pyramids. It is probably the fertile soils, which enable agriculture to begin, which explains why Man settled down here, but did not in North America.

There was an interesting programme on Discovery Knowledge, a few days ago, on a similar subject, on locating the Garden of Eden. It too pointed out that the Bible account of the Creation dates approximately to the time that Man actually began to settle down, and civilisation begins. The account places the Garden in Mesopotamia, and according to the programme the actual location appears to be on the Iraqi/Turkish border.

But, returning to the environment, the other thing I was watching last week was the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, which, this year, was looking at the 300 million year battle between plants and animals. It too, looked at the role of changing climate in that battle. Again the message, as with Man on Earth, was that climate change is nothing new in Man's, and the Earth's, history, and those species have done well, which adapted to that change.

In a sense, this ought to give us pause for thought, in all the current debates about climate change, and what to do about it. It may well be the case that Man is a big contributor to climate change, but, on the other, it could just be that we are so egocentric, as a species, that we cannot comprehend that the planet might be changing for reasons outside our control. If that is the case, the danger of ignoring that possibility is far greater than the danger of ignoring the fact that Man might be responsible. For example, the main reason that Earth is not a dead planet, like Mars, is the fact that we have a magnetic core, which acts to shield the Earth from the cosmic rays, which burnt off the atmosphere of Mars. Scientists believe that the Earth's magnetism could be about to disappear. Some place the date for that as being 1200 years away, some much sooner. But, that is just one catastrophic change. There are many normal features of the Earth, as a living planet, for example in relation to the Long-term carbon cycle, and the effects on volcanoes etc. that could at a stroke put far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than Man is responsible for.

If the Earth's climate does what it has done in the past, and simply changes irrespective of what Man does or does not do to try to change it, then those societies will survive and prosper that prepared for such change and adapted to it. As Tony Robinson pointed out, the societies that are most likely to be able to do that are those which are already developed, which have the resources, and the technological know-how to adapt and respond. After all, if we look at those advanced countries, they are already the ones that have cleaned up the mess produced by the Industrial Revolution in their own countries, they are the ones that have installed the more efficient and less polluting energy systems. It is the very poorest of societies that cannot afford to do so, that are led to over use the land, to burn dung on their fires etc, and all of the consequences of that.

As Bjorn Lomborg points out, if we really want to clean up the environment then the most effective means of doing so is to enable all of these societies to develop as rapidly as possible so that they too can share all the benefits that the already developed economies have, in being able to afford to introduce environmental measures, to invest in more efficient energy systems and so on.

After all, even were all the measures agreed at Kyoto, to be fully implemented, it would only delay the rise in global temperatures by just 6 years!!! Spending, all of the billions of dollars required under current projects - most of which, as with all State capitalist interventions, will simply disappear into some bureaucratic black-hole of lucrative salaries and contracts for the already rich - on developing these economies would speed up the day, in which they could both invest in cleaning up their environments, and would enable them to adapt to environmental changes, which might in any case be inevitable.