Jonathan Michael Feldman, June 2 and 3, 2022

Preamble

Fifty years ago, Barry Commoner explained a comprehensive approach to ecological transformation as part of the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment: “Somebody is going to have to pay the debt and people are scrambling to see that the other fellow pays. So we’re beginning to divide up and I think we’ve begun to see industry, labor, and consumers beginning to take very sharp sides on  these issues. It’s become I think a very basic and quite dangerous political issue because it leads very quickly to fundamental concerns that we’ve tended to push under rug—the question of the validity of the private enterprise system for example, the question of whether we can tolerate wars, questions of racial discrimination. These are things that we tend to avoid talking about but the environmental issue sort of casts a bright light on making them very difficult to avoid…I think the developing countries begin to realize that they have been victimized ecologically so to speak by colonization.  That the population explosion is in effect the last remnants of the harmful influence of colonization on the colonies and the proposition which I believe will come up at the official conference here for ecological reparations I think is a just idea which the developing countries…are putting forward and which I think reflects very clearly their proper understanding of the ecological base of their difficulties” (Commoner,  1972).  Today we have gone backwards in many ways because of “social amnesia” and “cultural lags” (Jacoby, 1975; Feldman, 2019). Here is a three point program to reverse course.

Point 1: Dismantle Campaigns: Convert/Diversify, Don’t Just Divest from Fossil Fuels

It is not enough to sell off stocks in companies tied to fossil fuels because that simply transfers ownership as Sasja Beslik and Christian Parenti (2013) have argued. As a result alternatives are needed.  One way would be to dismantle these firms as petroleum actors through processes that diversify or convert them to alternative energy.   This has occurred in the case of Equinor in Norway (Afewerki and Steen, 2002).  Another way is to divest from banks investing in the fossil fuel industries. An April 2022 report notes that “banks have financed fossil fuel companies to the tune of $4.6 [trillion] since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2016. This is despite most signing up to net-zero pledges” (Bindman, 2022).  A February 2021 report found that “since the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement at the end of 2015, ten Scandinavian banks have provided US$67.3 billion in credit, including lending and underwriting, to companies and projects in the coal, oil and gas sector.” These banks included SEB, Swedbank, Svenska Handelsbanken, Nordea (BankTrack et al., 2021).  Local governments, universities, political parties, churches, trade unions, environmental organizations (among others) should be pressuring these banks (and pension funds) to divest from petroleum and invest in alternative energy.  One can also pressure the major firms like Cargill, BlackRock, Wilmar International Ltd., Walmart, JBS and Ikea tied to deforestation (Lai, 2021).  Conversion processes show how dystopian firms can make new products and serve new markets (Feldman, 2022a). Money divested should be re-diverted to sustainable agriculture, alternative energy, public transport, green transportation, including the promotion of walkable cities, trip-reduction, and bicycle use and infrastructure.

Point 2: Leverage Media Mobilizations and Teach-Ins to Create Media Capital, Expose Companies, and Organize Consumption Networks

Barry Commoner was a key figure in the modern environmental movement and played an important role in the original Stockholm UN Conference on the Environment fifty years ago.  He argued that in the “technological society . . . the knowledge generated by science is a chief source of wealth and power.” Commoner argued that the environmental crisis required “profound fundamental judgments of how this knowledge, and the power it endows, is to be used.” He showed how the teach-in movement had created a diverse set of constituencies that could influence this fulcrum of knowledge and power by promoting an alternative technological social code. The University of Michigan environmental teach-in on March 11–14, 1970 brought together 15,000 students, politicians, municipal, state, and federal officials, industrial representatives from Ford Motor Company, Dow Chemical Company, and Detroit Edison Company; labor leaders like Walter Reuther of the UAW, “a variety of scientists with a professional interest in the environment: biologists, ecologists, engineers, sociologists, urban analysts, and public health experts,” and celebrities  (Commoner, 1970).

Teach-Ins can be used to organize mega events combining face-to-face deliberation and Internet-based gatherings mobilizing as many as twenty countries spread over multiple locations (GlobalTeachIn.Com, 2022).  These local networks, in contrast to airplane-fed centralized gatherings, do not discriminate based on the ability to afford hotels, air flights and the expenses of travel.  They offer a way to gather tens of thousands of persons, an audience which can play the following roles: a) turn a media audience into a consumption/procurement network; b) identify banking institutions tied to fossil fuel and plan pressure campaigns against such banks and companies tied to deforestation; c) create a movement of capital into alternative banks and away from targeted companies; d) deliberate on the design of transportation, food, and energy systems to promote sustainable practices; e) encourage procurement and investment in alternative technologies, e.g. durable products, alternative energy, localized clean transit solutions. These alternative planning processes can leverage the university as an initial hub that links social movements, businesses, and educational institutions as transition hubs for social change tied to procurement, planning, investment, and network formation  (Feldman, 2021).

Point 3: Link Consumption and Production Decisions

Much waste is generated by the way food is packaged, through inorganic plastic bags, and through non-reparable or short-lived products like television sets, mobile phones, computers, washing machines, refrigerators, and automobiles.  This waste increases the demand for mining rare earths which is potentially disruptive and “garbage imperialism” in which wealthy countries dump waste in the Global South. A key problem is “planned obsolescence” in which products are designed to last a short time (Stebbins, 1993; Waldman, 1993).  Dismantle Campaigns and Media mobilizations identified above can be used to shift investment towards start up companies, linking universities, start ups and alternative banking capital and finance supporting either more durable designs, companies making durable products or repair shops which fix products rather than dumping them (cf. Mont, 2008; Ober et al., 2017). Yet, “mental depreciation and perceived obsolescence play a critical role in determining smartphone lifespans” (Makov and Fitzpatrick, 2021). 

Citizen mobilization campaigns can be used to shift capital through banking choices and investments to support localized manufacturing that produces green jobs and divest from wasteful industries such as advertising, military production, and the petroleum industry and thereby avoid the trade-based energy-intensive surplus globalization helping to destroy the planet (cf. Andersson and Lindroth, 2001; Daly, 1992; Feldman, 2013; Feldman, 2022b; Foster and McChesney, 2014).

References

Samson Afewerki and Markus Steen, “Gaining lead firm position in an emerging industry: A global production networks analysis of two Scandinavian energy firms in offshore wind power,” Competition and Change, 2022.  Accessible at: DOI: 10.1177/10245294221103072.

Jan Otto Andersson and Mattias Lindroth, “Ecologically unsustainable trade,” Ecological Economics, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2001: 113-122.

BankTrack, ActionAid Denmark, Fair Finance Guide Norway, Fair Finance Guide Sweden, Oxfam IBIS & Profundo, “Scandinavian banks poured $67 billion into the fossil fuel industry since Paris,” BankTrack.org, February 1, 2021.  Accessible at: https://www.banktrack.org/article/scandinavian_banks_poured_67_billion_into_the_fossil_fuel_industry_since_paris.

Polly Bindman, “Banks still supporting fossil fuels to the tune of billions,” Capital Monitor, April 5, 2022. Accessible at: https://capitalmonitor.ai/sector/energy-and-utilities/banks-still-supporting-fossil-fuels-to-the-tune-of-billions/#:~:text=As%20they%20were%20in%202020,of%20a%20bank’s%20total%20lending.  

Barry Commoner, “Beyond the Teach-In,” Saturday Review, April 5, 1970: 50.

Barry Commoner, “1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (2/2).” Accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laHZWeG5mGI. Accessed March 31, 2021.

Herman E. Daly, “From Adjustment to Sustainable Development: The Obstacle of Free Trade,” Loyola of Los Angeles International Comparative Law Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, 1992: 33-44.

Jonathan Michael Feldman, “ Turn On, Tune In, Drop In: The New Economy Virtuous Cycle,” GlobalTeachin.Com, September 3, 2013.  Accessible at: https://www.globalteachin.com/turn-on-tune-in-drop-in-the-new-economy-virtuous-cycle.

Jonathan M. Feldman, “Is a Swedish Green Conversion Possible?: The Strengths and Limits to the Left’s Response,” Sciser.org, November 28, 2019. Accessible at: https://sciser.org/2019/11/28/is-a-swedish-green-conversion-possible-the-strengths-and-limits-to-the-lefts-response/.

Jonathan Michael Feldman, “From the ‘Greta Thunberg Effect’ to Green Conversion of Universities: The Reconstructive Praxis of Discursive Mobilizations,” Discourse and Communication for Sustainable Education, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2021: 121-139.

Jonathan Michael Feldman, “Economic Conversion,” Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict: Volume 3: Structural Dimensions, ed. Lester R. Kurtz, Elsevier, 2022a, 3: 137-150.

Jonathan Michael Feldman, “High-speed rail and barriers to innovation: The Budd Company and the limits of US indirect industrial policy in the 1960s and 1970s,” Journal of Transport History, Vol. 43, No.1, 2022b: 54–81.

John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, “Surveillance Capitalism:  Monopoly-Finance Capital, the Military-Industrial Complex, and the Digital Age,” Monthly Review, Vol. 66, Issue 3, 2014: 1-31.

GlobalTeachin.Com. 2022.  Accessible at: https://www.globalteachin.com/.

Russell Jacoby, Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing. Boston: Beacon Press, 1975.

Olivia Lai, “12 major companies linked to deforestation,” Earth.Org, August 17, 2021. Accessible at: https://earth.org/major-companies-responsible-for-deforestation/.

Tamar Makov and Colin Fitzpatrick, “Is repairability enough? Big data insights into smartphone obsolescence and consumer interest in repair,” Journal of Cleaner Production, No. 313, 2021: 127561.

Oksana Mont, “Innovative approaches to optimising design and use of durable consumer goods,” International Journal of Product Development, Vol. 6, No. 3-4, 2008: 227-250.

E. Ober, B. Dell’Anno, J.-R. Drèze, L. Herrmann, A. Luciano, R. Maltry, I. Oehme, B. Schmon, J.-P. Ventère, “Planned Obsolescence: The Government’s Choice?,”   PLATE: Product Lifetimes And The Environment. IOS Press, 2017: 315-318.

Christian Parenti, “A Worthy Goal, but a Suspect Method,” The New York Times, January 27, 2013. Accessible at: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/01/27/is-divestment-an-effective-means-of-protest/a-worthy-goal-but-a-suspect-method.

Kenyon Rainier Stebbins, “Garbage Imperialism: Health implications of dumping hazardous wastes in third world countries,” Medical Anthropology, Vol. 15, No. 1, 1993: 81-102.

Michael Waldman, “A New Perspective on Planned Obsolescence,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 108, No. 1, 1993: 273-283.