The Road to Solartopia: Closed for Construction
Patricia Shin-Ae Ko
April 25, 2007
After reading an interview with Harvey Wasserman about his book, Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, I'm compelled to make a point about how to get there from here. Wasserman paints the glory-road to Solartopia (a clean-powered utopia) with the profit potential of alternative energies; however, it's impossible to achieve without abandoning profit-making.
In a market economy, people who are conscientious about the environment will always be underbid by those who aren't. The cycle of resource abuse and pollution by industries doesn't end - it just migrates to new developing nations. If monetary values, wages and other things were equal, China could still produce goods cheaper than the U.S. because they don't have the same environmental restrictions. Even if the entire globe plugged into clean power, resource abuse would still be a problem as long as production was fueled by profit.
Wasserman envisions alternative energy profits outrunning competitors, but, so far, profits have not been anywhere near enough to overtake the fossil fuel industry - and they're unlikely to. Oil and gas companies will use their economic power to manipulate the market in their own interests as long as there is a drop left to sell. We may run out of fossil resources, but only after every last puddle is tapped at the expense of the environment.
Wasserman assumes the threat of environmental disaster will motivate people to make the changeover. However, it will only motivate those in power if their power is threatened. We've seen plenty of famines and wars that have devastated poor populations while the rich sit in the stands, dispassionately observing. Did we see compassion at the gas pumps during the Katrina disaster? Billions of people and species could die off, but rich corporations will not sacrifice their profit-making unless they are forced to: either their customers disappear entirely, or some entity with more power takes control.
It's a popular idea that common people can take control by choosing sustainable resources; however, they are usually so pinched between their wages and living expenses that they can't afford to. Everyone would drive hydro cars - but who can afford them? And, rich and poor both have the same tendency: money comes first. That is, as long as unsustainable products are cheaper, they'll buy them.
By the time environmental problems are bad enough to roust human survival instincts, the need for immediate survival will likely trample idealism - as it often does now. Necessity will dictate that people keep driving their gas powered vehicles to their jobs at the pollution factories. When global warming torches a third of the globe, we are more likely to see a pandemic of animalistic survivalism over competition for resources than we are to see an outpouring of environmental altruism.
The point Wasserman misses is that without a massive cultural and economic transformation, we'd need several Hitlers or Stalins to bulldoze society into Solartopian form. I'm opposed to communism and totalitarianism - they don't work. But, capitalism doesn't either. A pyramid shaped society with a few rich and many poor always results in power struggles. Capitalism claims the freedom to move up, but if any significant percentage of bottom-level people were to move up, the system would topple. Capitalism feeds off of the bottom shelf: low-wage earners. I call it "de-facto slavery" since they barely make enough for food and housing.
What else is there? Socialism? I don't see any Solartopia emerging in socialist nations. Changing the socio-economic structure is necessary, but the ideal is not found in the structure itself. The root of the problem is that people don't relate as one human family. It is an innate nature of greed and selfishness that results in the predatory behavior of profit-making. How can we take care of the environment if we can't take care of each other?
What we need is a revolution of heart and human relationships. Let's not wait until 2030 for alternative energy profits to kick in. We already have enough technology for a green utopia - that is, we have the tools but not the social development to use them.
Note: The interview mentioned is: Solartopia! An Achievable Vision of a Sustainable Future, by Daniel Redwood, April 7, 2007; http://www.freepress.org.
In a market economy, people who are conscientious about the environment will always be underbid by those who aren't. The cycle of resource abuse and pollution by industries doesn't end - it just migrates to new developing nations. If monetary values, wages and other things were equal, China could still produce goods cheaper than the U.S. because they don't have the same environmental restrictions. Even if the entire globe plugged into clean power, resource abuse would still be a problem as long as production was fueled by profit.
Wasserman envisions alternative energy profits outrunning competitors, but, so far, profits have not been anywhere near enough to overtake the fossil fuel industry - and they're unlikely to. Oil and gas companies will use their economic power to manipulate the market in their own interests as long as there is a drop left to sell. We may run out of fossil resources, but only after every last puddle is tapped at the expense of the environment.
Wasserman assumes the threat of environmental disaster will motivate people to make the changeover. However, it will only motivate those in power if their power is threatened. We've seen plenty of famines and wars that have devastated poor populations while the rich sit in the stands, dispassionately observing. Did we see compassion at the gas pumps during the Katrina disaster? Billions of people and species could die off, but rich corporations will not sacrifice their profit-making unless they are forced to: either their customers disappear entirely, or some entity with more power takes control.
It's a popular idea that common people can take control by choosing sustainable resources; however, they are usually so pinched between their wages and living expenses that they can't afford to. Everyone would drive hydro cars - but who can afford them? And, rich and poor both have the same tendency: money comes first. That is, as long as unsustainable products are cheaper, they'll buy them.
By the time environmental problems are bad enough to roust human survival instincts, the need for immediate survival will likely trample idealism - as it often does now. Necessity will dictate that people keep driving their gas powered vehicles to their jobs at the pollution factories. When global warming torches a third of the globe, we are more likely to see a pandemic of animalistic survivalism over competition for resources than we are to see an outpouring of environmental altruism.
The point Wasserman misses is that without a massive cultural and economic transformation, we'd need several Hitlers or Stalins to bulldoze society into Solartopian form. I'm opposed to communism and totalitarianism - they don't work. But, capitalism doesn't either. A pyramid shaped society with a few rich and many poor always results in power struggles. Capitalism claims the freedom to move up, but if any significant percentage of bottom-level people were to move up, the system would topple. Capitalism feeds off of the bottom shelf: low-wage earners. I call it "de-facto slavery" since they barely make enough for food and housing.
What else is there? Socialism? I don't see any Solartopia emerging in socialist nations. Changing the socio-economic structure is necessary, but the ideal is not found in the structure itself. The root of the problem is that people don't relate as one human family. It is an innate nature of greed and selfishness that results in the predatory behavior of profit-making. How can we take care of the environment if we can't take care of each other?
What we need is a revolution of heart and human relationships. Let's not wait until 2030 for alternative energy profits to kick in. We already have enough technology for a green utopia - that is, we have the tools but not the social development to use them.
Note: The interview mentioned is: Solartopia! An Achievable Vision of a Sustainable Future, by Daniel Redwood, April 7, 2007; http://www.freepress.org.
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