In his The Case for Climate Capitalism: Economic Solutions for a Planet in Crisis , Rand calls for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewables; he blames the political and business elite for the mess and says they will have to pay the price as markets turn against oil and assets are stranded; he even advocates for expansion of public transit.
His concern is that left ideas like the Green New Deal and Leap Manifesto – which wed strong climate action with job guarantees, labour protections, taxing the rich, and expanding social programs – alienate conservatives and the business class when we need them in our coalition to save the planet.
He advocates for market-based climate solutions like carbon pricing, targeted public subsidies, accelerated exports of renewables, “flexible regulations,” publicly mandated Green Banks to fund green industries, and government Green Bonds managed by the private sector to provide low interest financing for low-carbon industries.
Despite assigning them moral equivalence, more ink is spilled on chastising leftists than the libertarians and oil barons who Rand admits are at fault for the climate crisis.
First, the environmental movement’s pivot from narrowly ecological concerns to a broader focus on economic justice has been a deliberate strategy to foster a mass movement for climate action by giving working class and marginalized people something worth buying into.
The right wing support that centrists crave is a lost cause and unnecessary in a country where the vast majority of Canadians view climate change as an emergency and want the government to act accordingly, with 72% supporting a Green New Deal.
Jason Hickel’s book, Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World , Hickel’s focus on strategically limiting growth while meeting human needs acknowledges that biodiversity, deforestation, desertification are all major if underwritten issues that even a capitalist economy based on renewable energy would still fall short of addressing.
These are not problems for a future generation to deal with; Hickel argues it will be hard enough to decarbonize our current economy, let alone one that keeps growing bigger.
A green enterprise or sector structured this way wouldn’t need to read the tea leaves of the market – its customers would be right there on the board giving direct feedback on community needs, balanced with labour rights and fair wages.
Musk has a net worth of $180-billion , a symptom of the inequality produced by market systems. He is anti-union and ignored local regulations by sending workers back to Tesla’s California factory during COVID, suing the county and threatening to move shop in defiance of “fascist” health restrictions.
But can’t capitalism be reformed with better social programs, higher minimum wages, and taxing the rich? We absolutely need to fight for these, but having a few very powerful people in society is a liability to their success.
A Green Bank is a good idea, but why give the private sector more handouts instead of drawing on the massive wealth of billionaires, corporate cash reserves, capital gains, and tax havens to fund a green revolution that includes affordable housing, healthcare expansion, mass transit, social supports etc? Rand simply doesn’t see these as emergencies, and fails to understand climate change for the transformative opportunity it presents.
We face a range of emergencies including but not limited to climate change and we can’t trust the same people and systems causing them to helm the transition, or the next major crisis for that matter.
Nick Grover has a Master’s in History and currently works at an Ottawa-based INGO.