Think about climate change long enough and you soon realise that it is more than our lightbulbs that we are going to have to change. Colleagues have argued, as delegates gather in Bali to hammer out a global accord to avert this catastrophe, that a more fundamental overhaul will be required. Madeleine Bunting suggested a return to wartime rationing, in order to curb a hyper-consumerism that is unsustainable.
One could go further, arguing that it is not just excessive consumerism but capitalism’s very nature that makes it incompatible with the survival of our planet. For capitalism requires constant economic growth, yet the Earth’s resources are finite.
Two possible political consequences flow from this. One scenario would see a reopening of an ideologiÂcal debate that has remained all but dormant for nearly two decades.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the prevailing assumption has been that capitalism faces no serious rival. But now, armed with a plea not only to combat grotesque inequality but also to save the human race’s only home, progressives could start making the case against capitalism anew.
The other scenario is that capitalism could fight back — becoming the Earth’s salvation.
That’s the impression the capitalists are keen to project. Last week, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) put out a report pledging to do “what it takes” to play its part in reducing carbon emissions. Days later chief executives from 150 global corporations issued a pre-Bali communiqué calling for a comprehensive, binding United Nations framework on climate change. Its message to world leaders: rein us in, please!
So the CBI makes the right noises. Its signatories talk big but promise to cut collective carbon emissions of 370-million tonnes by only 1-million tonnes over the next three years.
Yet some in business are realising that they stand to lose more through inaction on climate change than action will cost.
And the smartest understand that there is money to be made. Witness the cash in carbon, which the World Bank now estimates is worth at least $30-Âbillion. Here’s how it works. On January 1 2005, the European Union put a cap on how much carbon companies are allowed to emit. If Company A gets an allowance to pump out 1Â 000 tonnes but emits half that, it can sell the right to emit the remaining 500 tonnes to Company B, which would otherwise overshoot its allocation. This way companies have a direct financial stake in keeping down their emissions, so that they don’t have to pay for credits if they breach the cap.
In practice, though, it seems European companies prefer to pay for their sins rather than change their ways. I spoke to James Cameron, co-founder of Climate Change Capital, which takes advantage of the UN’s scheme far beyond Europe.
Cameron will approach, say, a cement company in China and offer to invest millions in a new, greener plant. In return, once verified, the UN will hand the cement firm credits for the carbon it has saved, credits that it can then sell back on the international market. The proceeds are split between the Chinese and Cameron’s firm.
Except, isn’t this robbing Peter to pay Paul, reducing carbon in Beijing only to keep on producing it in Birmingham? No, says Cameron. Reducing carbon in China is more efficient, costing much less than an equivalent reduction in Europe. The firm’s projects aim to eliminate 70-million tonnes of greenhouse gases, equivalent to the entire CO2 output of Denmark.
Perhaps capitalism’s greatest contribution will come from the thing it does best: innovation. Now some savvy designers are not just eliminating waste and packaging, but thinking of consumption in an entirely different way. What if we did not buy a product at all, but merely a service? iTunes provides music, rather than a physical object, and that saves on materials and haulage. Electrolux is testing a new approach to laundry in Sweden, renting, rather than selling, washing machines to customers — thereby giving the company an incentive to prolong each machine’s life.
Clare Brass, who has just launched the Seed Foundation for “social environmental enterprise + design”, wants to change “the way we make contact with the energy infrastructure”. Carbon is invisible and colourless, and so is electricity; we don’t see it when we use it. That’s why Brass is a big admirer of the Wattson, a neat little gizmo that shows home energy use in pounds and pence and which glows redder the more you spend.
On their own, none of these ideas will be enough. And it’s clear that some of the headline efforts by global capital creak with contradictions. But some effort by business, alongside government, is surely better than nothing. The alternative is to wait for a political revolution, and a global resolve, that may come too late — or never come at all. — Â