Climate change — the sheer scale of the catastrophe we collectively face — is finally breaking through to mass consciousness. That’s a good thing. Yet accompanying it is a pernicious myth. Climate change is your fault — therefore, solving climate change is a matter of your individual actions.

This myth goes something like this. “I’m going to eat less meat! I’m going to travel less on airplanes!! And anyone who does those things is bad! They must not care about the planet!” It’s a fairy tale, my friends. Like so many myths, its purpose is to shield us from a truth we don’t want to face — or aren’t capable of facing yet.

Now, this is an old American fantasy — the fantasy of individual action. The idea that everything can be fixed by our individual actions — the more heroic, the better. But collective action?Cooperation? Those can never be allowed to exist. It’s the same myth, really, that caused America to end up without a working healthcare, education, or retirement system. Individual action, not collective action — everything’s your fault, and therefore, your responsibility, too. The system can never be at fault. There shouldn’t be a system for anything in the first place, except for anything but profit. Bang! Social collapse.

Here’s the truth.

Climate change isn’t your fault. It’s capitalism’s fault. 70% of carbon emissions come from 100 companies. Let me translate that.

The world’s giant corporations are effectively turning the skies, oceans, forests, and mountains into cold, hard cash. So much money so fast they literally don’t know what do with it, because there’s nothing left to do with it. So much inequality has resulted that it’s destabilizing societies like America and Britain by creating classes of new poor. As result, societies don’t have the resources left to fight problems like…climate change. Capitalism is sucking in nature, turning it into insane, needless, pointless profit — and destroying democracy, the planet, and life as we know it on it along the way.

That also means that there’s nothing whatsoever you can do to stop climate change, individually. You can affect it just the tiniest bit, “at the margin”, as economists sometimes say — certainly not enough to make any real different to it whatsoever. Maybe you can save a beehive in your own town. Good. I applaud you. But eating less meat and taking fewer plane flights? Completely ineffectual. Less than ineffectual, in fact. Feel-good egotism, frankly. Can you stop a mega corporation from wrecking a forest? From annihilating an endangered species? From drying up a great river? I didn’t think so.

That’s precisely because climate change isn’t a problem, a failure, a challenge of individual action. You or I didn’t cause it. We have very little to with it at all, in fact. Climate change is the ultimate problem of collective action. It is a problem of corporations, institutions, economies, bottom lines, objectives, purposes — systems, what they’re organized for, how, and why. The only system we have for collective action — globally, and in the world’s top emitters, like America and China — is capitalism. I don’t mean your brewer or baker. I mean GDP, mega corporations, “shareholder value”, “current accounts”, “free trade” deals. But capitalism is what created this mess — a system that doesn’t count nature, life, animals, trees as things, beings, of inherent, inalienable worth, to begin with.

Let me explain what I mean by all that.

It should be called “capitalism caused climate change”, CCCC, not “anthropogenic climate change”: 70% of carbon emissions come from just 100 companies. In other words, profit-maximizing corporations owned by “shareholders” — capitalist institutions — are what are causing climate change. You aren’t, and I’m not, and some poor family in Burundi isn’t. We’re not directing and controlling those institutions. Are you beginning to see what I mean by “climate change isn’t your fault, it’s capitalism’s?” Even if you eat a steak every day, and fly across the world every week, so what? You aren’t emitting the carbon that’s melting down the Arctic. You aren’t killing off life on the planet systemically, ruthlessly, exploitatively. You aren’t the cause of all this, and reducing your impact, while noble, makes no difference whatsoever.

Capitalism’s megacorporations are what’s causing climate change — or at least the system that shapes their beahviours is. Yes, really. Binaries, it’s often said, don’t help us. But what about when they’re true?

(At this point, many Americans will interject — “but those companies are only trying to serve us! So it’s still our fault — and if we change, we can change them!” Is that true? Of course not. People don’t have any power over corporations — if you did, the world would be a very different place. Corporations have power over people because they are effectively gigantic monopolies, like Amazon, Walmart, Facebook, and Google. If you can’t even stop Facebook from recommending hateful videos…from hacking democracy…good luck getting the entire system to care about the insects, bees, oceans, or skies. Why would it? When next quarter’s profits depend on not caring?

Reflecting that huge power imbalance between people and corporations, corporate profits have never been higher than they are today — at the exact same time that life on the planet is dying, and so is the planet itself. That’s not a coincidence — it’s a causal relationship. It’s that system of profit-maximization, of exploitation, of abusing everything in the name of more, more, more money, that’s really killing the planet and life on it. Yes, really. (And let me say there are even plenty of noble and wise people in them trying to stop it. But they are up against a system they can’t change.)

How do corporations maximize profits? In three ways. First, by paying no taxes. Second, by never really paying higher wages. Third, by charging the highest price they possibly can, while paying the lowest, which includes getting away with whatever they can, whatever form of abuse and destruction is permissible. And all that is really what destroys the planet — not just you demanding nasty, bad stuff from them. (There’s plenty of nasty, bad stuff they don’t give you, because the price is just too high, isn’t there? Porn, drugs, etcetera) The reason that the world’s 100 big corporations are happily destroying the planet and life on it because there’s no price whatsoever to it yet.

Let me make that clear with an example. Amazon pays no taxes. None. So what money is there to replenish the skies, oceans, and forests with? There isn’t. When Walmart doesn’t even pay people enough to live on — what chance do they have to spend money, time, and energy on things that are green and clean, not dirty and toxic, or to contribute (and demand) to a society that’s green and clean? And, of course, when entire industries don’t have to pay for the costs of carbon and extinct species…what reason is there not to deplete, abuse, exploit, plunder?

The gigantic corporations that are responsible for more than 70% of the world’s carbon emissions are also the world’s most profitable. They could internalize the costs of the damage they do, easily — but they don’t have to, because under capitalism’s logic, they shouldn’t: profit is good, remember. You internalizing those costs isn’t the solution to this problem. It won’t fix anything whatsoever — because this isn’t a problem that you created. You can bear those costs, sure — but if the corporations are the ones polluting and exploiting, and you’re the one paying the costs — why would anything change? All that will change is that you live a poorer life. You eat less meat and never travel — and there are the robber barons, laughing at you, while the shoot the last lions and rhinos in the head with high-powered rifles. You internalizing the costs of capitalism destroying the planet and life on it is eminently not the answer to capitalism destroying the planet and life on it — it’s just another, bigger, problem.

The answer really begins with thinking about all this in completely the opposite way of the bizarre American fantasy of individual action, the old hero myth. Thinking about climate change in terms of collective action — of cooperation, of purpose, of mattering.

What are the world’s corporations and capitalists doing with all that money — the most money ever, in human history? Absolutely nothing. Nothing at all, really. Because there’s nothing left to do with it. They’ve got so much money there’s literally nowhere left to put it. Yes, really. They’re buying back shares, mostly — and showering huge, obscene fortunes on CEOs and their minions, who turn right around, and hide it offshore, or stuff it in bank accounts, which is why interest rates are perpetually zero. Do you see what’s happening here?

Let me make the steps of this fatal dance crystal clear. One: gigantic corporations pollute the world’s skies, oceans, and forests. Two: they profit so immensely that they’re drowning in so much money they literally can’t spend it fast enough. Three: there’s nothing — not enough money, time, creativity, energy — left to save the planet or life on it with. Four: instead of connecting the dots, we blame ourselves. It’s our fault — we’re sinful, terrible people!

Maybe we are sinful, terrible people. Lord knows I am. But basic reasoning also tells me that this is a problem of collective action — not individual action. Let me explain.

What would happen if we (wait for it) made those corporations plant a tree every time they chopped one down? Protect a whole species everytime they threatened a forest? Scrub the skies clean, instead of fill them with ash? Well, pretty soon, things would right themselves a little. Now, we don’t do that — because we don’t have a system to do any of that. Note you can’t do any of that by yourself, and it’s a fantasy to imagine that individually, magically, people will — or should have to. It’s not their job, fault, task, or work — nor do they have the money or time to, nor will they ever have the money or time in a capitalist system when most people can barely make ends meet.

That’s a minor lie. We do have one system of collective action that works this century — just one. And it’s not capitalism. The only system of political economy in the world that’s proven itself capable of reducing carbon emissions — and that’s social democracy. Europe is the only region of the world that’s reduced carbon emissions…ever. Everywhere that’s capitalist — America, China, etc — emissions just keep skyrocketing. That’s because social democracy isn’t (just) capitalism. In it, the fundamental goal of society isn’t corporations profiting, while everything else goes (literally) to dust and ashes.

Now think about that on a global level. We don’t have — in the 21st century — a single measure of the world’s forests, oceans, skies, and how much wealth they really represent. So if we don’t measure the wealth they create, are…then is it any surprise capitalism basically plunders them for free? How can we create a system of accounts that charges nations for them, and credits them, too? Are you seeing what I mean a little bit by “problem of collective action”? Building such systems — measures of natural wealth, estimates of how much its been damaged, taxes institutions must pay in restitutions, investments societies should make — is the challenge of this century. Social democracies are beginning to do it. Capitalist societies, societies that stay capitalist, like America and China? They probably never will — because their sole goal is profit, not real wealth.

Let me illustrate.

What would happen if corporations had to pay into a global natural wealth fund? Not a “hedge fund”, but something much more like the World Bank. Depending on how much harm and damage they did. And that fund, in turn, was responsible for nurturing and nourishing the skies, oceans, and trees. Maybe then we’d have a fighting chance. But that system isn’t capitalism — in capitalism, corporations pay no taxes, because, well, that’s the logic of capitalism: profit is the best thing for everyone. Yet without paying taxes, without paying people decent wages, without investing in society, such systems can never be built.

Then there’s the techno-utopian fantasy that goes along with the individualist fantasy. “If we all change our sinful ways — and technology gives us magic meat — we can save the planet!!” What happens if we all start craving eating less meat? Lab grown meat? Sure, corporations will probably give it to us. But that doesn’t solve the problems of climate change or mass extinction. It only hardens them. Capitalism will happily pollute the skies and kill off the animals even faster, sell them dearer, because now you’re happily eating lab grown meat…just in a burning, desolate, arid world. Real meat — only for the super rich! There’s even less reason to care about the planet or the animals if we have capitalist substitutes for its “products.”

This logic — techno-utopianism — is the logic of regress. We can stop eating meat. We can stop using deodorant, shaving, reading books. We can rewind all the way back to the Stone Age. But that’s not really a solution to the problem of climate change. It’s just folly — adding regress to catastrophe. The point isn’t to turn ourselves into peasants and serfs hunting by firelight in the lord’s forests all over again. It’s to fix the climate, and keep some modicum of human progress going too. That’s a tough problem, sure. That’s why solving it is a lot harder than lab-grown meat for the serfs. Let them eat cake doesn’t stop the world burning — it never has.

If you want to be more ecologically minded, good for you. But don’t be under the bizarre American illusion that your individual action is a substitute for collective action, for systemic change. If it makes feel good, that’s necessary, vital, important. Maybe you’ll model the world you want to build. But collective action is a step far beyond that. This world doesn’t need heroes. It just needs working systems.

The world’s megacorporations are effectively turning the skies, oceans, forests, and mountains into cold, hard cash. So much cash so fast they literally don’t know what do with it. You eating less meat isn’t going to change that. What will change it is genuinely transforming the world institutionally. Making them pay their taxes. Punishing them when they are greedy and destructive. And creating very real systems of wealth whereby investing in nourishing and caring for the planet is an obligation, a right, a value, work to be done. Valuing every bee, insect, and tree, as a being with inalienable and inherent worth, that’s reflected in our economic statistics and indicators and bottom lines and organizations.

Do you see the difference? You eating less meat is walking away from a broken system. But it isn’t fixing one. Yet broken systems destroy, harm, and abuse. The problem this century is that our global system of political economy — capitalism — is destroying the planet, and all the life on it. Can you imagine a bigger problem than that?

In an age of broken systems, the problem isn’t you or me, my friends — unless, ironically enough, we think the problem is you or me.

Umair

May 2019