Econ-Utopia: The Bloodless Revolution, part 1 of 2: A review of Peter Barnes' CAPITALISM 3.0
Econ-Utopia: The Bloodless Revolution, part 1 of 2: A review of Peter Barnes' CAPITALISM 3.0by Jonathan Teller-Elsberg, CPE Staff Economist
An Econ-Utopia, brought to you by the Center for Popular Economics.
A few weeks ago, CPE Staff Economist Jerry Friedman wrote an Econ-Atrocity reviewing Bill McKibben's new book, Deep Economy. Though he says McKibben "has written a clear attack on much of what ails us," Friedman nonetheless criticizes McKibben for approaching the environmental and social problems of the day from an individualist perspective. For all that McKibben wants to promote and revive "community," he has the attitude (says Friedman) of a "personal Salvationist... [who thinks that] the enemy [is] ourselves: we use too much, waste too much, want too much; and the only salvation for the environment is to change our preferences, use less, recycle more, and choose to live simply." What McKibben misunderstands or ignores, Friedman argues, is the power of social institutions to drive behavior, regardless of the desires and seemingly free choices of individuals.
I think that Friedman will find solace in Peter Barnes' recent book, Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons, since Barnes' approach is definitively institutional. The problem, according to Barnes, is that the structure of the economy and society leave too much power in the hands of corporate capitalism. Even if all the CEOs and boards of directors and politicians were replaced with kind-hearted souls like McKibben, we would still face pretty much the same issues of environmental decay, economic inequality, and other social ills—the logic of capitalism and the legal structure of private property rights force the leaders of corporations to do what they currently do. He learned this from personal experience as co-owner and manager of several business ventures, most famously Working Assets (a telephone and credit card company that donates one percent of gross revenues to progressive charitable organizations). "I'd tested the system for twenty years, pushing it toward multiple bottom lines [that consider social and environmental impacts in addition to profit concerns] as far as I possibly could. I'd dealt with executives and investors who truly cared about nature, employees, and communities. Yet in the end, I'd come to see that all these well-intentioned people, even as their numbers grew, couldn't shake the larger system loose from its dominant bottom line of profit." (Ironically, Bill McKibben is quoted on the front cover of Capitalism 3.0 helping to promote Barnes' book.)
While the government is necessary, in Barnes' view it is incapable of successfully addressing these big problems because "most—though not all—of the time, government puts the interests of private corporations first. This is a systemic problem of a capitalist democracy, not just a matter of electing new leaders." (Emphasis in the original.) Having realized that neither the market economy nor the government has any likelihood of halting global warming or reducing inequality, Barnes began to wonder "Is there, perhaps, a missing set of institutions that can help us?"
He's been thinking about it for ten years, and he has a positive answer: the commons, which Barnes defines "as a generic term, like the market or the state. It refers to all the gifts we inherit or create together... The commons designates a set of assets that have two characteristics: they're all gifts, and they're all shared. A gift is something we receive, as opposed to something we earn. A shared gift is one we receive as members of a community, as opposed to individually. Examples... include air, water, ecosystems, languages, music, holidays, money, law, mathematics, parks, the Internet, and much more."
In his previous book, Who Owns the Sky?, Barnes was already on this track. He then argued that the solution to global warming is to establish the atmosphere as a legally recognized commons, owned by all of humanity, now and into the future, and managed by trustees. This "Sky Trust" would be legally obligated to protect the atmosphere on behalf of those innumerable future generations. It could do so by establishing sustainable limits on the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere by human activity, and then auctioning off these permits. Because all people share the atmospheric commons equally, the money from this auction would be distributed on an equal basis. The result would be a slowing and eventual halt to global warming and a simultaneous reduction in economic inequality.
This time Barnes has widened his vision beyond any particular social problem. His hope is that the establishment of an entire commons sector (of which the atmospheric Sky Trust commons is only one example), alongside the government and private, corporate sector, will create an institutional framework that makes it possible to address a wide array of social problems that result from capitalist profit-seeking and government's systemic inability to be fully representative.
[To be continued in the next Econ-Utopia...]
Sources:
Gerald Friedman, "Econ-Atrocity: The economics, and the politics, of environmentalism," April 20, 2007, http://www.fguide.org/?p=86.
Peter Barnes, Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons. Berrett Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2007. The book is available at no charge as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file at http://www.capitalism3.com/downloadbuy.
© 2007 Center for Popular Economics
Econ-Atrocities and Econ-Utopias are the work of their authors and reflect their author's opinions and analyses. CPE does not necessarily endorse any particular idea expressed in these articles.
If you would like to automatically receive CPE's Econ-Atrocities and Econ-Utopias by email, subscribe (or unsubscribe) by sending an email to econatrocity-subscribe@lists.riseup.net with the subject: subscribe. To see our archive of Econ-Atrocities/Utopieas please visit http://www.fguide.org/?cat=3.
Labels: Books, Class, Commons, Econ-Atrocity, Econ-Utopia, energy, Environment, Inequality, News, Political Economy, Politics, Social/Solidarity Economy
Texas Observer on TXU buyout
On the Texas Observer's blog, Forrest Wilder sounds some further cautions about the TXU buyout:- KKR and the Texas Pacific Group are unlikely to be long-term stewards of Texas' power supply. Private equity firms, which manage enormous pools of capital amassed by institutional investors and the super-rich, rarely hold onto their purchases for long, usually seeking an exit in less than five years.
- They also look for a return on investment of at least 20 percent, a profit that will ultimately be borne by ratepayers.
- In the short-term TXU will remain in private hands, making public scrutiny a whole lot harder. (Previously, TXU was a publicly traded company.)
- The new owners are promising some TXU ratepayers a paltry 10 percent reduction on rates that some consumer advocates say are inflated 30 percent.
Labels: carbon, coal, electricity, energy, global warming, TXU
TXU resources
Here's the New York Times overview of the TXU green buyout.The Dallas Morning News has a handy timeline of all the shenanigans that preceded this development.
And Daniel Mottola at the Austin Chronicle does an excellent job of fleshing out that timeline and the rest of this session's battle over global warming and air quality.
Labels: carbon, coal, electricity, energy, TXU
More on the TXU carbon emissions agreement
The decision by TXU's private buyers to cut back its dirty coal permit applications and to reduce its existing environmental impact rested on the realization that in an energy market where consumers care about how their electricity affects their health and the environment, "the entrepreneurial and the innovative will get more profit" than the polluting approach, said Fred Krupp, executive director of Environmetnal Defense.Environmental Defense also says:
In addition to withdrawing permit applications for eight proposed coal plants, Texas Pacific Group and KKR have agreed to:
- Terminate TXU's previous plans to expand coal operations in other states
- Endorse the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (US CAP) platform, including the call for a mandatory federal cap on carbon emissions
- Reduce the company's carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020
- Promote Demand-Side Management programs to reduce energy consumption
- Double the company's expenditures on energy efficiency measures
- Double the company's purchase of wind power
- Honor TXU's agreement to reduce criteria pollutants in Texas by 20% (TXU's 20% pledge was contingent upon approval of all 11 plants)
- Establish a Sustainable Energy Advisory Board, on which Environmental Defense regional director Jim Marston will serve
Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council, which negotiated the deal with TXU's buyers, praised their organizations' Texas offices and all of the other organizations and activists who have put pressure on TXU to drop its plans to double its greenhouse gas emissions since the company filed the eleven dirty coal permits in April 2006. These groups included the Sierra Club, Public Citizen, Rainforest Action Network, the SEED Coalition, the Texas Cities for Clean Air Coalition, Texas Business for Clean Air, Citizens Organized for Resources and the Environment, and Neighbors for Neighbors.
A representative of the Sierra Club's Lone Star chapter said, "I think that public, grassroots pressure played a big role in this. If the people hadn't spoken up loudly and consistently, the powers that be might still have gone through with it."
For some groups, may be a bittersweet victory. According to Environmental Defense:
As part of the negotiations leading up to the announcement, Environmental Defense agreed to settle its federal lawsuit against TXU (regarding the Sandow unit) in exchange for an aggressive environmental pledge from Texas Pacific Group and KKR. The new company will continue to pursue permits for the Sandow unit and the two Oak Grove units.
Members of the press from Waco, which will be downwind from two of the TXU plants that remain in permitting, expressed concern about the Oak Grove facilities in a conference call with Environmental Defense and NRDC this afternoon. And long-time Dollars & Sense will recall the ongoing fight near Rockdale, Texas, against Alcoa's (and now TXU's) expansion of its aluminum smelter and associated lignite mines and plant in that area.
The Sierra Club said that while the group views the withdrawal of the eight permit applications and the other aspects of the agreement as "really exciting, especially the endorsement of the carbon cap," it's important to remember that 11 of the 19 dirty coal permit applications that followed Texas Governor Perry's fast track permitting order in October 2005 are still under consideration. And of the three TXU plants still in permitting, she said, "The Oak Grove ones are the worst. The worst."
The Sierra Club added that because these other plants are still under consideration, it's very important that concerned citizens keep pressure on the Texas legislature to pass laws this session that promote energy efficiency, promote renewable energy, and force coal permitting to slow back down—including a proposed two-year coal permitting moratorium that was recently introduced the the Texas Senate.
A few days ago, Tom Smith of Public Citizen's Texas office told me that one of TXU's cardinal sins—one of its actions that helped generate so much public opposition to its plans—was trying to "sneak in under whatever emisisons legislation might be passed this session." A cardinal sin, maybe, but also a Texas political tradition (see the Alcoa story, above). David Hawkins of NRDC would perhaps say that cleaning up their act in the first place is the smartest and most just way that TXU could "sneak in" past pending legislation. Said Hawkins, once the session is over and emissions legislation is passed, "companies that have already reduced their emissions of greenhouse gases will automatically be rewarded because they'll have less work to do."
Labels: carbon, coal, electricity, energy, global warming, TXU
TXU buyout cancels 8 of 11 dirty coal permits
Environmental Defense has announced that "as part of their plan to purchase Texas electricity provider TXU Corp, Texas Pacific Group and KKR have agreed to terminate the applications for eight of TXU's 11 proposed coal plants in Texas and will adopt a platform of initiatives that will significantly reduce the company's environmental impact in Texas."More information from the press conference call to follow soon.
Labels: carbon, coal, energy, global warming, TXU electricity
Clean energy in Texas: get involved
Read about Dallas-based energy company TXU's plans to build 11 new coal-fired power plants in Texas here. TXU is already Texas' largest source of carbon dioxide emissions, and the new plants would double TXU's CO2 output. In Texas and around the country, a half dozen major environmental organizations, seven local citizens groups, 36 cities, counties, and school districts, 400 business leaders, three major church groups, and thousands of individuals have been agitating against the plants. To join them, visit Stop the Coal Plant for letters and petitions, ways to donate, the latest press, and a handy fact sheet.Look for more coverage of this activism in the Mar/Apr issue of Dollars & Sense.
Labels: carbon, coal, electricity, energy, global warming, TXU
Delay in TXU coal plant permitting in Texas
In October 2005, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed an executive order that, among other things, cut the length of permit hearings for new power plants in Texas from 18 months to only six. Last year, Dallas-based power company TXU filed permit applications for 11 new coal-burning power plants that would more than double the company's emmisions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide—a consequence that many consider outrageous, considering that Texas leads the nation in CO2 emissions and TXU is the state's largest CO2 polluter.TXU argues that the new plants will meet Texas' desperately growing need for electricity and that not to build them would have sever consequences for the Texas economy. Opponents argue that the potential costs in federal funding and public health outweigh the alleged energy benefits, and that there are cleaner and more economically stimulating ways to provide the needed electricity.
The TXU permit hearings were set to begin Wednesday, but on Tuesday Texas State District Judge Stephen Yelenosky ordered a four-month delay to allow opponents to better prepare their case. The permit hearings are now set to begin June 27.
According to the Dallas Morning News, "Judge Yelenosky said his decision hinged on whether the governor may constitutionally direct a hearing officer to reach a decision by a particular deadline." Yelenosky wrote, "I have concluded that the plaintiffs are likely to prevail on their argument that the governor lacks that authority."
Perry's office issued a two-sentence reply: "No one should be surprised that a single liberal Austin judge would rule against Gov. Perry and his efforts to increase energy capacity in Texas. We will take a close look at the ruling and make a determination on how we will proceed."
No one should be surprised by Perry's response, either—considering that, since his October 2005 fast-track order, Perry's re-election campaign has received more than $100,000 from entities associated with TXU and its proposed plants, as well as five other proposed plants.
As the new June 27 hearing date approaches, various legislative actions and activism are in the works to prevent the new plants altogether. A large coalition of state and national environmental, business, and citizens' groups are leading rallies and grassroots lobbying efforts, and the Rainforest Action Network is pressuring the banks that might finance TXU's plants to withhold their support should the permits be approved. Look for more on this story in the Mar/Apr issue of Dollars & Sense.
Sources
Environmental Defense's overview of the issue
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Dallas Business Journal
Dallas Morning News
Labels: carbon, coal, electricity, energy, financial activism, global warming, TXU