Sunday, November 2, 2014
Chris Hayes — The New Abolitionism
An apt comparison of the cost of the abolition of slavery in the US at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation in terms of capital destruction and the cost of capital destruction resulting from addressing climate change. The cost of abolition was huge and altered the course of US social, political and economic history profoundly. So will addressing climate change in a time way to avoid greater than two degrees Celsius warming, which is considered the cut off point beyond which civilization as we know it would change drastically.
The Nation
The New Abolitionism
Christopher Hayes
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8 comments:
"The cost of abolition was huge."
Excuse me? The cost of the Civil War was huge. But the cost of freeing the slaves? The slaveowners lost the rights they had over slaves, but slaves gained the rights of freedom, and political rights as well. In addition, from a practical standpoint the real options of the populace as a whole multiplied. There was no net cost from abolition, but a huge gain.
Wiped out almost the entire capital of the South at the time, and a significant portion of the capital of the US. It's still considered one of the largest destructions of capital in history, and perhaps the largest the did not result from physical destruction in war.
Tom,
$75 billion would be the appropriate measure to use, and not the $10 trillion he cites. The reason is simple. The freed slaves still worked. Capital was not destroyed - 90 % of the slaves remained in the South. Yes the cost of doing business for the former slave owners increased. But that was it! His arithmetic is very incorrect.
Similarly, the oil companies have seen the writing on the wall for a long time. The prudent ones are already heavily invested into alternative energy sources. The only issue is which energy sources will be the "winners" - The Rossi "results" are likely causing many oil producers to think out their strategies. I believe that the Saudi play is as much a response to that, as to fracking and tar sands. The Saudi's would always have a larger profit margin to fracked and tr sands oil - but Rossi's e-cat changed the game.
It is dramatic analogy.
I think the transformation of the energy industry has gone off quite well. The US exports almost 4m bbls of oil equivalent in refined products per day. We've built, what 20?, cellulosic ethanol plants in Iowa alone in the last two-three months, bringing hundreds of millions of gallons of capacity into markets and upgraded corn alcohol plants. We've plans for hundreds more all over the corn belts of the US and Europe to minimize transport and pollution while collecting crop residue. We have cellulosic biobutanol pilot plants being built with plans for rollout in 2 or 3 years. We've built more solar and wind generation capacity, small and large scale in the last few years than anyone imagined possible even one decade ago. Last I read, nearly one percent of the US workforce now worked in renewables, compared to 2% in fossil fuels. Electric motors have been improved close to theoretical limits. We've reduced fuel consumption in transportation -- jets, cars, trains by 30 or more%. We've improved batteries technology more in the last decade than in the previous century and are on the cusp of really, really cheap light vehicle transportion with inexpensive, non-toxic batteries for the mainstream.
The progressives like to have end-of-world issues to bang on about, the big question is what the next "OMG we are going to die" issue will be. We need something that can be very dramatic and blends well with the other progressive favorite themes: slavery, nazis, racists and government conspiracy.
Why not abolish unemployment and inequality while we're at it?
More McKibben-based nonsense. Getting really tired of these hyperbolics running around with models that predict this and that 86 years out. They predicted (and craved) a massive El Nino last March, and were wrong. NOAA couldn't see the massive snowfall this past weekend that broke 100-year records in the SE US when it published October 16, 2014, "LONG-LEAD SEASONAL OUTLOOKS "
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/90day/fxus05.html
That was two weeks ago.
"Why not abolish unemployment and inequality while we're at it?"
Amen. And worry about that first instead of 2C in 2100 AD.
Clonal" "The freed slaves still worked. Capital was not destroyed - 90 % of the slaves remained in the South."
Economists consider abolition a destruction of capital (ownership of means of production) through its conversion to labor. I didn't make up the terminology.
Since then the push has been to keep the ex-slaves and their progeny as close to being treated as capital as possible. Indeed, this is the overall thrust of capitalism in treating labor as a commodity as it "the labor market" in which firms rent labor rather than own it.
Paternalism aka Fordism requires labor to serve firm policy in lifestyle even in off hours. While this is not as intrusive as it was, at least in the same way, we still see this today in firms surveillance of worker use of social media, for example. In a very real sense your employer "owns" you.
A goal of neoliberalism is to erase the distinction between labor and capital as much as possible. However, under the law, labor is not capital and labor has rights, albeit limited rights, that capital does not. So the constant push to change the law to limit the rights of labor.
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