The Political Physicist

The last few months have seen an impressive shift in public discussion on how to address climate change. Thanks in large part to newly-elected democratic socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the concept of a “Green New Deal” has come to the fore. This marks a significant move away from previous policy proposals which have tended to rely on free market mechanisms such as carbon taxes or (worse) cap-and-trade systems to encourage a shift away from fossil fuels. Instead, Ocasio-Cortez proposes government planning and investment to achieve a rapid change in the American energy system, while providing employment for everyone willing and able to take it. As big and important a step as this is, however, we must quickly begin developing detailed proposals and demands if it is to be more than a slogan. We must start by stepping back and deciding how much future emission of greenhouse gases will be deemed acceptable. We then need to consider when and for what purposes these emissions will be produced. This will require planning at the national, local, and sectoral level. We also need to think about how mitigating climate change will shape our future R&D priorities. Finally, we must consider what strategies and tactics will be required to instigate and see through such a sweeping economic overhaul.

Choosing Emissions Limits

The first thing to be considered for any Green New Deal is what climate science says regarding how much more greenhouse gas (GHG) can be emitted. Of course, any emissions will make climate change that little bit worse, so what we really mean is what level of emissions is compatible with the amount of global warming we are willing to accept. The Paris Agreement commits us to limit warming to 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures, with some language about aspiring to keep warming below a 1.5°C rise. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does seem to believe the latter goal is theoretically possible (although some scientists dispute this), but it would require emissions falling by about half by 2030 and reaching a net level of zero by 2050. The emissions reductions actually pledged in the Paris Agreement, however, would only limit temperature rises to 3°C. All of this is further complicated by the fact that any statements of what reductions are needed to achieve a temperature goal are probabilistic. Because our climate models contain uncertainty, we must run a large number of subtly different simulations and analyse the range of results. Scientists will then state what will be required to have a certain probability of limiting climate change to the desired level. The upshot of this is that even if we were to cut emissions as rapidly as described above, there is still a non-negligible chance that warming would be greater than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels—perhaps considerably so.

What this means is that we, as a global society, must choose the level of warming we consider to be acceptable and how confident we want to be of limiting warming to that level. At this point you might be tempted to say that there should be no further warming beyond what has already occurred and that you want to be as close to certain of that as possible. However, then we start running into a second consideration: cost. Decarbonising our society will be an expensive affair, taking up resources which could have been used for other things such as non-climate related infrastructure, increased leisure time, or international development. The faster we want to achieve it, the more expensive it will be. We thus need to consider what is the optimal trade-off between sacrifice today and climatic chaos tomorrow.

This is not simply a matter of people in the Global North trying to justify inaction. Even if all GHG emissions ceased tomorrow, a certain amount of climate change is now inevitable and will require societal adaptation, particularly in the Global South. Such adaptation means building massive amounts of new infrastructure and much of this will be made from steel and concrete. Producing these materials emits CO₂ due to the chemical reactions involved. Thus, if this infrastructure is needed before these industries can be decarbonised, protecting the Global South from existing climate change may mean making climate change a little bit worse. That is not even to consider the massive amounts of non-climate infrastructure needed in developing countries, such as hospitals, decent housing, and reliable electricity.

As can be seen, even the relatively simple task of deciding how much more GHG we will allow to be emitted involves very difficult and inherently political questions. The issue of which countries are allowed to produce the emissions is even more fraught. Those of us on the Left would, I hope, agree that developed countries such as the UK must take the lead in decarbonising, with much more aggressive time-tables than their developing counterparts. In the absence of a global body able to come to and enforce decisions along these lines, it will be necessary for us as socialists and internationalists to make this case domestically when emissions targets are being decided.

Allocating Emissions

Given the political nature of emissions goals for the UK, it is probably necessary for these to be set by Parliament. Obviously, there should also be extensive national education and debate to help inform parliament’s decision; the more grassroots involvement the better, both in its own right and as a way to achieve buy-in for the decarbonisation project. The point is that this decision must not be left up to a technocratic body.

There is no purely technical fix for global warming. We have to organise society differently to make technical solutions possible. However, when it comes to deciding how to achieve climate goals and allocate the UK’s remaining GHG emissions, technical matters do come into play. In order to ensure sufficient technical expertise is available, I would suggest that parliament create a permanent body I will call the National Decarbonisation Committee (NDC). This would include MPs, members of devolved governments, local councillors, civil servants, union members, scientists, engineers, everyday citizens, and representatives of industry.¹ The goal would be to bring together people from all of the sectors which will be most affected by decarbonisation plans, such as electricity, gas, construction, rail, haulage, aviation, shipping, agriculture, and heavy industry. Clearly the NDC would be very large (practically a parliament in itself) and would have to contain a number of subcommittees.

The role of the NDC would be to develop and implement a binding plan for the complete decarbonisation of Britain, starting now and stretching until whatever date Parliament has specified to achieve that goal. This would mean taking on a number of responsibilities currently held by the Committee on Climate Change (such as developing carbon budgets and commissioning research papers), although the latter body should likely continue to exist in a reduced capacity to provide independent oversight of the NDC. The decarbonisation plan would set binding GHG emissions for each year and for each sector. Of course, the plan would be less detailed the further into the future it goes and the NDC must be able to adapt based on changing conditions or the development of new technology. However, the initial plan should be one which we are confident can be achieved with minimal reliance on future technologies.

In addition to planning GHG emissions, the NDC would also need to consider the availability of so-called “critical metals“. These are relatively rare materials which, to date, there has not been a great demand for. Examples include lithium, cobalt, rare earth elements, and platinum. However, these metals are critical to the manufacture of green technology such as batteries, generators, photovoltaic cells, and electric motors, causing concerns that shortages may hold up decarbonisation. The NDC will need to include in its plans future extraction of critical metals and allocate investment towards this. Furthermore, we must ensure that the rising demand for said elements does not result in a new wave of imperialism with large countries racing to control reserves in Africa and turning a blind eye to environmental and human rights abuses. This is one of many ways in which we will need to link climate policy with foreign policy, as will be discussed in a future article.

To develop such plans it will be useful to have some idea of what a (net) zero carbon society will look like. For example, how much energy will we need and how will it be produced? What sort of transportation will people use? What materials should we be constructing buildings from? This way, we can identify which pieces of infrastructure will prove vital and account for their construction when budgeting for emissions. It will also inform what sorts of research and development will be required in coming years and prevent us building infrastructure which might reduce emissions in the short term but not in the long term (e.g., switching from coal powerplants to gas). Compiling this information will require extensive consultation both with experts (to determine what is actually possible) and the general public (to determine what is desirable). These goals can be achieved through planning at the local and sectoral level.

Sectoral and Local Plans

Once the broad outlines of carbon budgets are known for each year and sector, it will be necessary to develop more detailed plans to meet these objectives. This will be necessary in all sectors, but key ones to consider will be energy, transport, agriculture, steel, and cement. Each of these must develop their own plan for complete decarbonisation, in line with the limits set out by the NDC.² This could be done by subcommittees of the NDC working with the key companies in each industry.

At this point we begin to run into the classic problem of social democratic economic planning: how do you make private industry cooperate with your plans? At a minimum, clearly enforceable regulation would be required, although this can be vulnerable to corporate capture. In any case, how do we then ensure that companies comply with the regulations in a socially responsible way and without exploiting loopholes? Furthermore, industrialists are loathe to concede any control over their enterprises to workers or the state and may choose simply not to invest in retaliation. Under capitalism, the state is sensitive to such actions and naturally sympathetic to the needs of capital, as it relies on a well-functioning private economy with which to fund itself via taxation. Thus it would be difficult for the state to enforce such a decarbonisation program on capital unless the latter is also under pressure from a militant working class. The NDC should therefore orient itself towards empowering and educating workers. Unions could be legally empowered to take measures up to and including strike action to keep their employer in line. Needless to say, we are a long way from trade unions in this country being sufficiently mobilised or radical to do this successfully. Work must begin to develop these capacities. In the absence of such militancy, the NDC would need to rely on legal and regulatory means alone to enforce its program as much as possible, although these are likely to be insufficient.

I would argue that energy and transport are both of such importance to decarbonisation that even worker militancy would not be sufficient, however. Furthermore, both require integrated national planning which is not possible in a fragmented and competitive market (as some relatively centrist figures have argued with regards to energy). As such, both will need to be taken into public ownership in their entirety. I will suggest a model for publicly owned energy in an upcoming article, but suffice to say that Labour’s current policies are not nearly ambitious enough. On transport Labour is somewhat better, having committed to nationalise rail (although we need to consider how the Fourth Railway Package would effect this, depending on our future relationship with the EU). Calls to regulate local busses and create new public bus companies should go a bit further to include buying out existing bus companies and must be extended to long-distance coach service as well. We should also look to take as much as possible (given the balance of class forces) of ferry services, airports, road haulage, and airlines into national public ownership. Each of these nationalised industries would then report to the NDC on their plans and progress in complying with decarbonisation objectives.

The role of local government will also be very important. As such, councils should develop their own decarbonisation plans. Key areas to be addressed would likely be transport and housing. The former would involve reducing car use in urban areas, perhaps including an outright ban on personal vehicles in city centres (where feasible). This would require a dramatic increase in public transit provision. Further planning would be needed to electrify public transit, taxis, service vehicles, and remaining cars. More details on this ambitious and long-term project will be provided in a future article. Any socialist government should instigate a new wave of council house construction, which provides an opportunity to drastically improve energy efficiency in homes. Furthermore, these should be multi-use developments which are pedestrian-friendly and reduce the need for car ownership. The planning system must begin to centre climate change in all of its decisions: no project should be given planning permission unless it is shown to be compatible with local and national decarbonisation goals. Finally, as the level of government closest to individual citizens, local authorities would be well placed to carry out education and consultations on behalf of the NDC. It should be clear that these commitments could not be carried out without reversing many of the damaging austerity cuts to central and local government.

Fixing our Technology

While we should try to avoid making plans that rely on yet-to-be-developed technology, in some cases this may be unavoidable. Furthermore, even where current technology might, in principle, be sufficient to allow decarbonisation we should still look to improve upon it where possible. As previously mentioned, decarbonisation will also greatly increase demand for certain critical metals, which current mining technology may not be able to meet.

The rule of thumb for addressing climate change is to “electrify everything and clean up the grid”. For example, we can address emissions from gas boilers by switching to heat pumps powered by clean electricity. By and large we know how to produce large amounts of green electricity and all that is required is the political will to do so. However, there are a few sources of emissions for which this approach is not applicable. It could be that it is not practical to electrify them because batteries would be too heavy and wiring can not be made to stretch far enough (e.g., aviation and shipping). Or it could be that something unrelated to energy consumption produces the GHGs, such as the methane produced in the stomachs of cattle. Key areas of research would thus be

• developing a carbon-neutral fuel for aviation, shipping, and long-distance road transport (e.g., hydrogen or synthetic hydrocarbons)
• finding a way to smelt steel without using coal
• producing cement without emitting CO₂
• capturing and storing unavoidable GHG emissions
• improving agricultural techniques to reduce emissions
• developing extraction and recycling techniques for critical metals

If we are to see a large increase in the use of intermittent renewable energy sources then we will also need far better energy storage capabilities than available now. Furthermore, while this is something it would be better to avoid, it looks increasingly likely that some form of “negative emissions” technology will be needed later this century to minimise warming, so research into this should also be pursued.

In all of this we will need to harness the powers of the entrepreneurial state. We will also need to do our utmost to integrate research (up to and including the development of new products) with the work of the NDC. Here a proposal made by Canadian socialist Niki Ashton during her (sadly unsuccessful) bid to lead the New Democratic Party is instructive. She suggested that a new state enterprise (or “crown corporation”, to use the Canadian term) be created called Green Canada. This would:

Accelerate pollution-fighting technology by funding open-source research into solutions for the climate change challenges we face and invest in public sector clean energy innovation. Every scenario for avoiding runaway climate change includes a technological breakthrough we don’t have yet. The public sector has an important role to play in fostering innovation. Green Canada will partner with our public universities to fund and carry out basic and applied research in renewable energy and energy efficiency at dedicated new research institutes. The rewards of research breakthroughs will be shared by all of us: selected successful research will be the basis for new manufacturing projects run directly by Green Canada. In time, this crown corporation will grow into a complex green technology actor, reinvesting funds into research, taking on strategic production tasks that aid in meeting climate goals and providing the federal government with streams of revenues for other needs.

Such an approach could usefully be applied in this country as well. In addition to fostering vital research and development, by producing new goods in-house such an enterprise would ensure that the rewards of publicly-funded research are enjoyed by the public, rather than privatised as often happens now. It would be able to lead the re-purposing of polluting industries and redevelop production centres struck by capital flight. It would also begin to cultivate technological expertise within the state and assert the importance of public leadership in industry, without involving the level of confrontation with capital that would be involved in outright nationalisation.

From the Technocratic to the Popular

The scope of such a national decarbonisation project is almost incomprehensible. It would require economic planning on a scale unknown outside of a world war. However, while capital has every reason to cooperate with the government in the context of a war, we cannot expect it to be so enlightened in this instance. Despite climate change posing arguably an even greater threat than the Nazis, it is a distant one which, in any case, falls most heavily on the poor. As such, it would be folly to expect companies to submit themselves to a democratically decided-upon plan.

There are no easy answers to this. Subjecting capital to democratic planning will require the workers in affected industries to be extremely well-organised and militant to be able to scare it into acquiescence. Unfortunately, there are no signs that this will be available any time soon. As such, doom-mongering about the need to fix climate change by 2030 (or whatever is the latest cutoff date) is not useful; there is every chance that, despite our best efforts as activists, we will not be strong enough soon enough to meet that deadline. In this context, setting relatively short-term hard deadlines could easily cause people to give up in despair or collapse into nihilism.

Instead we must accept that there are no shortcuts to building a working class movement and commit to it for the long haul. In the short term we must take whatever inadequate climate policy is available, while constantly arguing for much more ambitious action. By the time we are powerful enough to carry out a full-throated program of decarbonisation as described above it may already be too late to limit warming to 1.5 or even 2°C. However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still do it, as even then we’d still have the potential to prevent the damage from being yet greater.

With that sombre note in mind, what can be done now to start building the forces we need? Given the amount of democratic control over industry which will be required, the trade unions will be key allies. Right now they can start developing plans for converting factories to green production. As this will have implications far beyond a single workplace or even a single industry, it must be a collaborative effort between individuals unions. The TUC would be well placed to take the lead on this. More generally, all unions need to start developing proposals for how to go about decarbonising their industries. Of course, union representation is at fairly low levels in this country and this would limit the portion of the economy which such an approach could cover. As such, a strong push to organise in new workplaces will also be very important.

However, such plans are of limited use if they are never implemented. Unions cannot expect to make this happen simply by asking their employers or lobbying the government. As already mentioned, even in the context of a national push for decarbonisation, a body like the NDC could easily find itself contending with uncooperative private companies. In such circumstances one would hope to push for worker control and self-management to break the deadlock. In the near term, and as a step towards building the capacities for that, unions might try to make decarbonisation part of their bargaining demands. As an example, RMT could demand rail electrification in future negotiations with Network Rail and the Train Operating Companies. Even if this isn’t something over which unions can legally bargain, recent strikes by educators in the United States have shown that unions can strike over demands which are not officially up for negotiation. The same approach should be applied here.

Conclusion

Climate change is a daunting problem. Although formulating solutions demands extensive technical knowledge, technocracy is wholly inadequate to see these solutions implemented. The only thing which will make capital cooperate with such plans is workers threatening to (or actually) assert control over the workplace. Our strategy for addressing climate change must be relentlessly focused on developing the requisite level of knowledge and capacity to do this among workers. This means working to educate and organise workers in industries which will be affected by decarbonisation. The tactics which we have seen widely used by climate activists to date have instead focused on public spectacle (e.g., marches) or disruption (e.g., gluing themselves to trains), which will at best temporarily raise awareness of the issue. However, such approaches are unable to build the capabilities of workers to oversee decarbonisation and as such do more to make activists feel better that they are doing something than to actually address the problem. With the limited time and resources available to the Left, such tactics are a level of self indulgence which we cannot afford.