The Global Energy Crisis and the Politics of Apocalypse
By Dave Brophy
Life on Earth runs on energy that comes from the Sun. Human life is no exception. However, contemporary society runs on stored solar energy in the form of fossil fuels.
Humans “industrialize” by tapping into this uniquely concentrated and versatile form of solar energy. The shape of today’s industrialization is such that the vast majority of us depend on modes of production and distribution that will not “deliver the goods” without fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, however, supplies of fossil fuels are finite and becoming scarce. This is particularly true of oil, the lifeblood of the global economy. Experts expect the extraction of oil to peak in the next few years, if it has not already. Meanwhile, world demand is growing fast.
It is unclear whether or not the world’s human population of 6 billion and counting could be sustained without the fossil fuel based energy subsidy upon which the functioning of today’s global economy depends. Meanwhile, demographers’ estimates for the size of the global human population when it peaks, some time in the second half of the 21st century, lie between 8 and 12 billion. Even assuming material resources could be divvied up in a reasonably equitable manner among all 8, 10 or 12 billion of us, simply ensuring the bare minimum for each person could pose a serious challenge.
The Climate Change Question
Furthermore, burning fossil fuels emits greenhouse gases that may change climate, which could be catastrophic if it were to occur dramatically and abruptly. Some climate experts worry that a major human-induced shift in global weather patterns is already happening. Indeed, at the most recent round of Kyoto talks, held in Montreal last December, delegates were particularly concerned about the preceding year’s unusually extreme weather. The frequency and intensity of high-energy storms in 2005 exceeded every other year on record, which goes back to about 1850.
“There is a powerful indication from these figures [concerning extreme weather for 2005] that we are moving from predictions of the likely impacts of climate change to proof that it is already fully under way,” according to Thomas Loster, CEO of the Munich Re Foundation, which is part of one of Europe’s largest insurance companies.
Notwithstanding such scary uncertainties surrounding increasing fossil fuel scarcity, market logic tells us that everything will be fine. The law of supply and demand will cause the price of oil and other fossil fuels to continue rising, forcing a re-orientation of the economy towards smaller-scale production and distribution - a process of localisation, so to speak.
Granted, market logic today is nuanced enough that occasional government interventions are accepted as necessary complements to the proverbial invisible hand. The potentially climate changing effects of burning fossil fuels apparently qualify as grounds for such intervention, although just barely.
Take Kyoto, for instance, the multi-lateral agreement that sets reduced fossil fuel emission targets for governments that have signed on. The agreement reflects the dominant influence that industry has on the substance of market interventions that ostensibly moderate adverse environmental impacts. It bears mention, moreover, that the Canadian government has so far only moved backward, not forward, in terms of meeting even the modest goals set under Kyoto.
Given this track record, it may only be a matter of time before the Canadian government drops Kyoto in favour of an alternative, more laissez-faire approach to the climate change concern. If so, it would not be the first. The governments of the US, China, Japan, India, South Korea and Australia, which together account for nearly half the world’s fossil fuel emissions, are already doing it. They met recently in Australia with representatives of the world’s biggest mining and energy firms for the inaugural Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. Not surprisingly, reducing fossil fuel emissions did not top the meeting’s agenda.
Following the inaugural talks, commenting on the decision of all parties to leave it up to corporations to reduce fossil fuel emissions, or not, as they see fit, US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman stated:
“I don’t count this [as] a change in policy. What this is is a… harnessing of the private sector. It is recognizing the fact that it is the private sector that makes the investment decisions.”
Investing in (Short Term) Future
Bodman’s comments are noteworthy not only for their forthrightness. The future trajectory of the global economy and its use of remaining fossil fuels has a lot to do with investment. A plethora of technologies exist that, if implemented on a large scale, could provide the technical basis for a transition away from fossil fuel intensive production and distribution. But such large-scale changes require large investments, not least for expensive initial infrastructural replacement.
However, as Bodman correctly points out, under capitalism, the so-called private sector makes the investment decisions. Under capitalism, there is not even a pretense of democracy as far as the economy is concerned, despite the terrible extent to which people and the planet are affected by elite control over what is produced, how much is produced, and how production is carried out.
Furthermore, under capitalism, the minority that controls production must make decisions based on the imperative of short-term profitability. They are in no place to invest even in their own long-term future, let alone that of society at large. Any business that does not abide by the all-important principle of short-term profitability will not survive the vicious economic competition that underpins capitalism.
Hyper-exploitation of the Earth
An important consequence of this aspect of capitalist production is hyper-exploitation of the Earth. Sooner or later this undermines the integrity of the environment. Not only do natural landscapes lose their picturesque quality as a result. More significantly for humans, capitalist production breaks down natural processes that provide services essential for the sustenance of human life - processes that maintain clean air and water and fertile soil, for instance.
Fossil fuel based subsidies are used to at least partially make up for the ecological breakdowns caused by hyper-exploitative practices under capitalism. In agriculture, for instance, the old method of rotating fields, allowing them to fallow periodically, becomes less and less viable in the face of economic competition. When the soil is planted and harvested year after year, it cannot naturally re-assimilate the elements it loses under production. Chemical fertiliser must then be used to maintain productivity. This constitutes a fossil fuel based subsidy. However, a crisis is bound to ensue when the chemical fertiliser becomes too expensive or is simply unavailable, and all that is left is lifeless dirt.
Capitalism creates crises such as this all the time. Indeed, for capitalists, solving today’s crises are the basis of tomorrow’s profits. However, global fossil fuel scarcity threatens the ultimate crisis. Under capitalism, the global energy crisis embodies the potential to unleash the most extreme forms of destruction, manifesting the irrational logic of capitalism taken to its ultimate conclusion. This means not only ecological collapse, but also rampant warfare. It can be captured in a word: apocalypse.
What Apocalypse Looks Like
Working for a landscaper one summer I handled a self-propelled lawnmower with a temperamental switch. More than once I lost control of it and risked toes and feet chasing it down. Regarding the overwhelming historical inertia of capitalism, it may be tempting to do as I should have done with that stupid machine: step back, arms crossed, and let the thing run itself into a swimming pool; in other words, wait for the apocalypse.
However, it is worthwhile to elaborate explicitly what it is we are talking about when we refer to the apocalypse.
First, there is the implication that the apocalypse, although presumed to be looming, has not yet arrived. But could it be that the “moment” of doom is already upon us?
In Hegemony or Survival (2003), Noam Chomsky reminds us that at critical moments of geo-political power play, the world’s rulers have risked holocaust in the interest of maintaining power. While Chomsky frames the book in apocalyptic terms, its content is not speculative, but based entirely on contemporary facts. He simply exposes the existing and chilling reality of nation-states, controlled from on high by corporate and political elites, vying for control over the world’s remaining resources through brutal economic and military warfare.
So if we were to ask Chomsky about the apocalypse, even if he disliked the melodramatic quality of the term, he would probably tell us matter-of-factly that it has already arrived. And he would have a point.
We might tease out another assumption embedded in the apocalypse concept by elaborating still further what it is we think we mean when we talk about it; namely, that the dreaded end will be quick and painless. The way in which some of us tend to engage in apocalyptic discourse conveys a sense of gleeful anticipation, which to me only indicates a lack of reflection upon what concrete human suffering is likely to occur when the reckoning comes.
It seems to me that if we want to envision what apocalypse really looks like, we need only consider the various disasters that are happening all around us in the world right now. Crises such as those that currently exist in Iraq, New Orleans, Darfur, and elsewhere may in fact constitute the apocalypse that we are talking about.
We might also reflect on the proposition of Mike Davis that catastrophic situations create “theatres of class struggle”. If this is true, and if the apocalypse is in fact upon us, we should anticipate that as the manifold crises that make up the apocalypse continue, and multiply, we will all sooner or later be forced to face intensifying class struggle. Given that the great majority of us in the world are, at the present moment, decisively on the losing side of that historical and on-going confrontation, it is in our best interest to get organised.
Apocalypse or Revolution?
I only realised after writing the previous section of this article that I was vaguely remembering and echoing a passage from Rosa Luxembourg, written during the destruction of the First Great European War. Affirming Friedrich Engels’ insight that “Capitalist society faces a dilemma, either an advance to socialism or a reversion to barbarism”, Luxembourg said, “We have read and repeated these words thoughtlessly without a conception of their terrible import. At this moment one glance about us will show us what a reversion to barbarism in capitalist society means.”
Throughout the history of capitalism there has no doubt been countless instances when people have looked around and been overwhelmed by horrific violence and wanton destruction, and wondered how life could possibly go on. That question has never been more relevant than it is today. Nor is the answer very hopeful, but it is at least clear.
The survival skills we need to avert apocalypse are not technical, but social in nature. By organising in our communities and workplaces to challenge the irrational logic of capitalism, as we confront business and the state on our own behalf, we learn about radical democracy on a mass scale, and self-organised collective action. The skills we learn in the process build the capacity we need to effect a socialist alternative, one in which ecological sustainability and meeting human needs are actually within the realm of possibility. If we are to avert apocalypse, our only hope is to fight for socialist revolution.
