How might we develop a socialist approach to technologies, in the face of the threat of rapid, potentially uncontrollable, climate change?
Consider, first, the responses to the climate emergency by capital, and by the most powerful governments that represent its interests.
On one hand, these responses continue and redouble the exploitation of people in the Global South. On the other hand, these policies are designed to slow down the transition away from fossil fuels, and to perpetuate the dominance of energy provision by the fossil fuel producers and other big corporations.
Among the most dangerous weapons they deploy are narratives that portray the move away from fossil fuels as a simple switch of technologies, without any deep-going social change (so-called “technofixes”).
To counter these narratives, we need to develop our own approach to technologies.
Means of production
The starting point, in my view, is that socialists stand not only for common, social or public forms of ownership of the means of production, but also for changing what those means of production do.
We are for the development of technologies that meet human needs, and against technologies that enhance the power of capital (or against machinery that is “hurtful to commonality”, as the Luddites put it).
It will not be enough to take the means of production, as they have been developed by capital, into social or public ownership. We must aim to change what those means of production produce, and the way they produce it.
What does this mean, politically, here and now?
First, we need to ask, in whose interests is the development of particular technologies?
Geoengineering and 'net zero'
For example, carbon capture and storage. This is a mechanism that captures greenhouse gases from a power station or industrial process, and stores them, to stop them going into the atmosphere.
Oil companies have tried for 40 years, with little success, to make this mechanism work. And they have now convinced governments, including the British and United States governments, to spend billions of dollars on it.
A variation of this theme is direct carbon removal from the atmosphere, a type of geoengineering being tried by tech companies who hope to finance it with so-called carbon credits.
State funds are invested in these problematic techniques, for mechanically taking greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, instead of in changes aimed at stopping those gases going into the atmosphere in the first place.
The idea of “net zero”, in the way that it is used by leading politicians, implies a gigantic role for these technologies. This false discourse runs right through the international climate talks, which have in recent years increasingly been captured by the fossil fuel industry and its lobbyists. Climate scientists have exposed the duplicity involved.
In my view these techniques are anathema to a socialist approach to climate change, but some socialist writers embrace them. So this needs to be discussed.
Another approach strongly supported by the fossil fuel companies is adaptation of their infrastructure for supposedly low-carbon fuels, such as hydrogen.
This is a grand technological deception. Producing hydrogen from fossil fuels simply perpetuates the use of those fuels. And hydrogen produced without fossil fuels has a very heavy energy cost, and so should always play a secondary role to genuinely zero-carbon technologies.
Again, governments are pouring money into hydrogen rather than into those genuine technologies. And a huge machinery of disinformation has been mobilised to greenwash this. Again, researchers have worked hard to rebut the falsehoods, and campaigners have raised awareness.
Socialist approach
We need to go further, not only to reject the greenwash, but also to develop a coherent socialist approach to technologies. I do not think we have one yet.
I will suggest some starting points, with specific reference to tackling climate change – which is certainly not the only disaster in the making, caused by the deep rupture between humanity and its natural surroundings, but is for sure the most immediately threatening one.
Climate change is caused principally by the burning of fossil fuels. These fuels are consumed by, and through, big technological systems – by which I mean electricity systems; transport systems; built environments; industrial, agricultural and military systems, and so on. These technological systems are, in turn, embedded in the social and economic systems that we live in, which are dominated by capital.
Fossil fuel use needs to be reduced to zero in the next few decades, which will mean transforming all these systems.
It is useful, analytically, to break down exactly how fossil fuel use can be cut. There are essentially three ways to do it.
1. To reduce the final use of energy, by doing things differently.
This is not about individuals tightening their belts. It is about systems working better, with less.
For example, cities with more public transport and fewer cars are not only more socially equal, more healthy and less polluted. They also emit far fewer greenhouse gases.
Replacing cars with public transport gets people where they want to go in a better way, using less, and potentially no, fossil fuel.
There are many other examples, from cutting waste in construction and industries, to reducing the throughput of needless junk – plastic packaging, luxury jets, make your own list.
2. To reduce the throughput of energy, by changing the technological systems.
A good example of this is: insulating homes properly, and heating them with electric heat pumps instead of gas-fired boilers. This keeps people just as warm, with about one fifth of the amount of energy.
In Britain, with our cold winters, engineers have been recommending it for years and gas companies have lobbied hard against it.
3. To produce energy without burning fossil fuels.
The best ways, as you know, are to generate electricity from solar panels and wind turbines.
Once we have identified those three broad approaches, we still face a host of questions.
For example, when I say: reduce the throughput of energy, by changing technological systems, does that mean replacing petrol cars with electric cars? Does it mean switching steel making to electric arc furnaces?
In both those cases, because of the heavy material costs of those electrified techniques, it is better wherever possible not to switch technologies, but to reduce the final energy use by doing things differently – to promote public transport; to practice material-light construction.
When I say: produce energy without burning fossil fuels, does that include nuclear power, as well as renewables?
In my view, nuclear is inherently bound up with strong state machines and the military. So renewables should be preferred.
Again, there are socialist writers who argue differently. We need to have that discussion, too.
We also need to consider ways in which technology, even under capitalism, can better facilitate just and equitable ways to live.
In my view, decentralised renewable power generation has great potential: it is well-suited to municipal and local development, and to forms of common ownership, and is compatible with more effective, and lower, levels of final use of electricity.
We need to know more about the potentials of, and constraints on, such technologies.
To conclude, public ownership of energy systems is not enough to deal with climate change.
Take China, where the energy technologies are overwhelmingly state owned.
China is the world leader in producing solar panels and wind turbines, and the world leader in generating renewable electricity. But it is also the world’s leading consumer of coal. China consumes more coal than all other countries combined; in recent times it has consumed as much coal every three years as Britain consumed in the 19th century.
This disastrous misuse of fossil fuels (that some “ecosocialists” are reluctant to face up to) is not due primarily to energy use by Chinese people, but to energy use by industries oriented to exporting goods to rich countries.
Public ownership is not enough. It needs to be combined with a liberatory vision of the future, and of the ways that technologies, liberated from capital, can be re-made.
[This article is based on a talk given to the Roadmap to Ecosocialism on-line forum, co-hosted by the Global Ecosocialist Network and marxmail.net, on September 10.]