Eco-Socialism or Barbarism

Part Two: The most urgent social issue

By Saral Sarkar and Bruno Kern

The capitalistic and large-scale-industrial economic model and way of life, which have got the upper hand in the whole world, have accelerated a two-fold destruction process: the process of destruction of our natural basis of life and, simultaneously, the process of exclusion of ever larger sections of humanity from the economic and social bases of living. The two processes reinforce each other.

The ecological crisis is qualitatively different from all hitherto experienced crises in world history. For the first time in the history of mankind it seems probable that the human species will nearly wife itself out within a few decades. That means that the ecological crisis is not limited to certain regions, but has a global dimension. The continuous degradation of the natural basis of life impairs the material basis of livelihood of a large part of humanity. A growing number of climate related catastrophes are generating frequent emergency situations. They negatively affect all spheres of politics and social life, limit the leeway for undertaking necessary changes in society as a whole, and so they become the main cause of manifold other crises and of violence within societies and between states. Under such circumstances also the continued maintenance of a minimum of democratic structures would not be possible any more.

The possibilities of existence of the greater part of the present generations of humanity and that of the future generations are connected in many ways:

1. The main cause of the destruction of nature on the one hand and that of the world-wide process of impoverishment or economic-social exclusion on the other are the same: the capitalist economic system — especially in its present-day escalation under the neo-liberal paradigm — which is now prevailing all over the world and which is subject to a growth compulsion.
2. The ineluctable survival strategies of those who have been made poor often necessarily lead to environmental destruction.
3. The growing world-wide chasm between the rich and the poor finds direct and the most evident expression in an extremely unequal proportion of consumption of natural resources. The rich 20 percent of the world population, those living in the OECD-states, consume more than 80 percent of the non-renewable energy and other resources, and they (therefore) dump 80 percent of the polluting substances in the biosphere. (However, in the case of many non-renewable resources China and India are at present racing to catch up with the OECD states.)
4. The environmental costs resulting from the consumption of natural resources in the rich industrial countries and climate change are for the most part saddled upon the impoverished majority of the Third World people. A 1992 study of the Fraunhofer Institute estimates that if the present course is not radically changed, an additional 900 Million to 1.8 billion starvation deaths will take place till 2030 due to shifts in the vegetation zones. That means, a starvation catastrophe of hitherto unknown dimensions would result not from any distribution injustices, but as a direct consequence of climate change (cf. Wohlmeyer 1994: 221f.). Not included in the figure are would-be victims of rapidly spreading diseases like malaria or catastrophes like floods, hurricanes etc.. Already today, apart from economic and political power relations, ecological devastation is a direct cause of growing impoverishment in the Third World. For instance, since the mid-1970s, due to global warming the amount of precipitation in the sub-Saharan Sahel-zone has gone down by ca. 40 percent. The ravages of hurricane „Mitch” (1998) in large parts of Central America and the intensification of the climate phenomenon „El Nino“, which inter alia caused drought catastrophes in South East Asia, are probably directly connected with global warming. In South China, today, the livelihood of 300 Million people is endangered through the rapid melting of the Himalaya glaciers. According to the International Red Cross there are already over 50 Million environmental refugees in the world. Undoubtedly, seen globally, the most urgent social question is the ecology question.

The concept that is central to calculating the eco-balance of our economic activities is that of environmental space. It can be defined as the amount and quality of economic activities that can be undertaken within the limits of nature‘s capacity to regenerate itself. Thereby we grant every citizen of the world the right to an equal share of nature‘s resources and sinks. The concept was originally developed by the Dutch economist Hans Opschoor. The study Sustainable Germany (in German: Zukunftsfähiges Deutschland) of the Wuppertal Institute, which was commissioned by BUND (Friends of the Earth, Germany) and Misereor (the Catholic Charity Organisation in Germany), developed the concept further and stressed thereby the aspect of global justice. According to this study, environmental space should be determined by four criteria: (a) ecological carrying capacity, (b) ability of nature to regenerate itself, (c) availability of resources and (d) global equality of opportunity, i.e. equal right of every human being to use nature, no matter whether he lives in the Netherlands or in Burkina Faso (cf. Zukunftsfähiges Deutschland , pp. 133–138). So here the criterion of global justice is already integrated in the very method of calculating eco-balance. We therefore think that this concept should absolutely be taken over by the leftists, no matter what political consequences the Wuppertal Institute, for example, draws from it.

With regard to the emission of carbon dioxide, the most important of the greenhouse gases (it is responsible for 50% of the greenhouse effect), it means in concrete terms the following: Globally, roughly more than two times as much CO2 is being emitted as the earth can absorb through its CO2-sinks (the oceans, large forest areas etc.). That means, in order to stop the greenhouse effect, the global CO2 emission must be halved immediately. It is clear that that is not possible. Therefore we can only try to weaken the greenhouse effect to such an extent that civilisation and vegetation can adapt themselves quickly enough, that it, above all in the interest of its victims in the Third World, remains controllable. One generally assumes that that is still possible if the rise in the average global temperature remains limited to 0.1 degree Celsius per decade. On this basis, renowned scientists set the global reduction goal at 50 to 60 percent of the 1990 level by the year 2050. But since the rich industrial countries are responsible for a much higher CO2 emission than the world average, the reduction in these countries must be correspondingly drastic. In terms of these criteria, in Germany, for example, the CO2 emission must be reduced by 90% by the year 2050. It must be stressed here that these reduction goals state just the minimum that is ecologically necessary; the factual reductions should not fall below this.

We must also consider the possibility that a positive feedback takes place in the course of global warming. That means, the negative effects of global warming may reinforce each other, leading to an uncontrollable dynamics. An example thereof is the possible release of large amounts of methane through the eventual thawing of permafrost in Siberia (the greenhouse potential of methane is many times higher than that of carbon dioxide.)

The ecological U-turn is therefore directly a question of global justice. The production and consumption level of the industrial countries cannot be universalised. For example, in North-Rhine-Westphalia ( a province of Germany) alone, more cars are registered than in the whole continent of Africa; and merely 6% of the world population can afford the luxury of flying (Air traffic makes a considerable contribution to climate change). Then there are also the problems directly resulting from production and consumption in the industrial countries, problems with which the majority of the people of the Third World are saddled. We can mention, for instance, the negative effects of uranium mining in Niger or the soil erosion resulting from export-oriented agriculture.

If we do not want to disregard this global horizon, then we cannot avoid the insight that the people of the industrial countries, but also the rich and the middle class of the Third World, with their ecologically unsustainable mode of production and way of life, are participating in a worldwide chauvinistic selection process, which robs others of their chances of survival. For leftists, the ecological U-turn must therefore stand at the top of their political agenda. The acceptance of drastic changes in the way of life and consumption patterns, which would necessarily result from such a U-turn (especially in the rich industrial countries), can however be best achieved through an egalitarian reorganisation of society.

© Saral Sarkar and Bruno Kern
Cologne and Mainz, March 2008

This article was originally published by Initiative Eco-Socialism (PDF) as a revised translation of the German original, which was first published in 2004.

• Part One: Capitalism is Failing
• Part Three: The illusion of sustainable capitalist development and the necessity of eco-socialism

Tags: Bruno Kern, capitalism, eco-socialism, Saral Sarkar, socialism

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