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Once the dream of neo-Malthusian elites and a fringe of ascetic environmentalists, the notion of “degrowth” has lately been embraced by many on the left, including some Marxists. This should raise eyebrows: Marxism has generally been understood as a “Promethean” political philosophy that aims at fully developing productive forces to generate widely shared abundance. How did this unlikely convergence happen? Saitō Kōhei’s new book, Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism, offers some valuable clues. The book’s original 2020 edition was a smash success in Japan, and its English debut has already begun to make waves.

Saitō’s basic premise is simple enough: The capitalist drive toward “growth” is destroying the planet, so we must rapidly adopt what he terms “degrowth communism” if humanity is to survive the climate crisis. The author’s conclusion that “degrowth is incompatible with capitalism, and it is essentially an anti-capitalist project” is sure to resonate with a younger generation favorably disposed toward socialist ideas and inundated with warnings of impending climate disaster.

If there is one asset that defines capitalism, it is debt—not any debt, but debt that can be easily transferred from one investor to another, and preferably debt that is convertible into state money at any time on the behest of its holders, the creditors. Convertibility of private debt on demand is typically assumed but is not always an enforceable claim. The logic of a private economy is that you can sell only if you find a willing buyer, that is, a private buyer. If private buyers retreat, demand declines, and asset prices fall, investors who recently thought that they had huge amounts of wealth at their fingertips might lose it in no time. To lock in past gains, investors will try to convert their private assets into state money, the only financial asset that is guaranteed to keep its nominal value.1 The reason is that, unlike private entities, states do not have a binding survival constraint. They can print money and they have the power to unilaterally impose burdens on their citizens in the form of taxes or austerity measures, thereby ensuring their own survival. When private parties run out of money, they may request help from their peers, but they cannot force them to deliver. If they fail to garner support, they face extinction; the only alternative is to go to the source of state money: the government or its central bank.

As noted in chapter 1, convertibility is one of the key attributes of capital; its relevance is most apparent in the case of financial assets, in particular, debt instruments. For holders of these assets, convertibility has the same importance that durability had for landowners or major lenders to corporations who sought a stable capital base against which to lend. Investors in tradable instruments are fickle; they are constantly on the move as their holders are out to find yet another profit opportunity. It therefore makes little sense to lock them up behind real or legal shields. But this does not mean that holders of financial assets do not crave certainty; their certainty comes from the ability to convert their assets into cash on demand without a serious loss. The trick is to make these assets look almost like state money, that is, to cloak them in legal modules that enhance the chances that they can be converted into cash on demand. The history of debt finance can therefore be retold as a story about how claims to future pay have been coded in law to ensure their convertibility into state money on demand, without suffering serious loss. This chapter traces the coding techniques for the most basic forms of debt, the notes and later the bills of exchange that emerged between the twelfth and the seventeenth centuries, all the way to modern-day securitized assets and credit derivatives. The story also illustrates the shift away from landowners, the privileged holders of property rights who often figured as debtors in the past, to creditors as the asset holders who enjoy the strongest legal protection. Signs for this shift have long been evident, but only after land had been thoroughly dethroned in the late nineteenth century did financial assets come to the fore as a leading source of private wealth. As we shift focus from owners to creditors, and from land to debt, we will encounter the same legal modules that we have seen at play before: contract, property and collateral law, trust, corporate, and bankruptcy law. These legal modules mitigate the risk associated with debt and in doing so have fueled its expansion from one unprecedented height to another—to be followed only too often by equally steep downturns, safe only for the successful intervention of states and their central banks. Huge gains could be made along the way, and losses were often shifted to others.

**Set up for this in cross – ask about the specifics of the tax based on what the ev says

Back to basics. The research literature shows that the most effective policy to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is an economy-wide, revenue-neutral, upstream carbon tax. Economy-wide means that all carbon consumption is taxed and done so at the same rate – no demonizing coal, lambasting petroleum, or other uneven policies. Revenue-neutral means that the proceeds of the carbon tax are used to reduce or eliminate other taxes on capital and labor that would be a detriment to growth. A carbon tax is not a way to grow a larger government. It is a way to reduce the corporation income tax, payroll tax, and so forth. Finally, upstream means that carbon is taxed at the first point it enters the economy – at the wellhead or mine and so forth.

ACCORDING TO A new report this week by the Pew Research Center, Americans have finally come to an agreement about how to solve the climate crisis: by planting trees. A trillion of them. In theory, those trees will suck so much carbon out of the air that we won’t have to worry about installing solar panels or ditching the SUV for an electric car. According to the Pew report, the trillion trees solution is supported by 90 percent of both Democrats and Republicans. Contrast this, for example, with support for tougher limits on carbon emissions from power plants, which is backed by 93 percent of Democrats, but only 64 percent of Republicans.

On one hand, this near-universal support for tree-planting as a solution to the climate crisis is not surprising. Who doesn’t love trees? They are our ancient partners on this planet, and they may be far more intelligent than we know (Read Richard Powers’ magnificent novel The Overstory). And yes, the 3 trillion or so trees that already grow on the planet suck up about a third of the CO2 we dump into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. But the idea that we’re going to solve the climate crisis by planting a trillion trees is a particular kind of lunacy, and a great example of what happens when bad science hooks up with do-gooderism and they sleep together in a bed of political expediency.

ONLY A MONSTER would say no to this pitch: The best way to beat climate change—the warming of Earth caused by gases like carbon dioxide emitted by human industry, leading to rising sea levels, worsening fires and storms, drought, and disease—is simple. Plant a trillion trees. It’d be “one of the most effective carbon drawdowns to date,” said an article on the idea in the journal Science this past summer. And who doesn’t love trees, right?

Except the math turned out to be a little shady. Last month a bunch of climate scientists and ecologists piled onto that tree research in the same journal, calling out numerous errors in the first team’s calculations. At about the same time, a whole other bunch of ecologists started pushing back on the agriculture-tech startup Indigo for pitching a similar land-based carbon sequestration strategy, the “Terraton Initiative,” paying farmers to use new methods that could suck down a trillion metric tons (a teraton) of carbon. These goals are critical and the ideals are noble—who doesn’t want to stop climate change? Pretty much everyone except the US government agrees on that. It’s the numbers that are the problem.

Over the past six months, major food companies, like General Mills, Danone North America, Kellogg, and others, have launched efforts to cut their carbon footprint, in part by expanding the use of regenerative agriculture (also called carbon farming) practices. Regenerative agriculture refers to an array of management practices — such as cover cropping, compost amendment, or grazing management — that sequester carbon in agricultural soils.

While these practices have positive soil health benefits, efforts to increase agricultural soil carbon sequestration likely don’t have nearly the level of expected climate benefits. Such poor carbon accounting means that corporations, governments, or individuals seeking to offset their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through regenerative agriculture are fooling themselves and the general public.

With the emphasis on carbon sequestration, big business can buy carbon credits and tick that off the risk register. Green consumers can clear their conscience and sleep better at night by ordering carbon “neutral” produce. But there are three problems with that scenario.

The first and biggest problem is technical.

It’s a beguiling proposition: pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by supercharging populations of microscopic, carbon-munching marine phytoplankton through the relatively simple and inexpensive process of adding iron to the ocean.

But a new study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggests that iron fertilization, as the process is called, is unlikely to help mitigate climate change.

If scientists were to widely fertilize the Southern Ocean or any other iron-depleted waters with iron, the effort would temporarily stimulate phytoplankton to grow and take up all the macronutrients available in that region. But eventually there would be no macronutrients left to circulate to other regions like the North Atlantic, which depends on these macronutrients, along with iron from dust deposits, for phytoplankton growth. The net result would be an eventual decrease in phytoplankton in the North Atlantic and no significant increase in carbon dioxide draw-down globally.

Lauderdale points out there may also be other unintended effects to fertilizing the Southern Ocean with iron.

Historically, the oceans have done much of the planet’s heavy lifting when it comes to sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Microscopic organisms known collectively as phytoplankton, which grow throughout the sunlit surface oceans and absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, are a key player.

To help stem escalating carbon dioxide emissions produced by the burning of fossil fuels, some scientists have proposed seeding the oceans with iron — an essential ingredient that can stimulate phytoplankton growth. Such “iron fertilization” would cultivate vast new fields of phytoplankton, particularly in areas normally bereft of marine life.

However, speeding up or changing the course of nature can have disastrous effects. Scientists suggest that rapid uncontrolled changes in pH, carbonate saturation state, and dissolved aqueous CO2 can affect ocean ecosystems. While this process mimics a natural one, it is not natural; the substance would be delivered to ecosystems at rates far higher than normal which could create ‘dead zones’, areas where oxygen levels are too low to support life. Additionally, the amount of olivine necessary for these applications is extremely large and is comparable to present-day global coal mining, a counterintuitive proposition as the planet looks to turn away from mining. In the case of basalt, to sequester one billion tonnes of CO2, more than 3 billion tonnes of basalt would have to be spread, an amount equal to almost half of the current global coal production.

Additionally, at such a large scale, enhanced weathering could change the ecology of the water, leading to an increase in the microbial organisms that produce greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide.

Solar radiation management is not a solution to the climate problem

Solar radiation management does not address the drivers of human-induced climate change, nor does it address the full range of climate and other impacts of anthropogenic greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions. Solar radiation management [SRM] aims at limiting temperature increase by deflecting sunlight, mostly through injection of particles into the atmosphere. At best, SRM would mask warming temporarily, but more fundamentally is itself a potentially dangerous interference with the climate system.

The reflective power of clouds may be less effective at counteracting global warming than previously thought, according to new research.

Scientists behind the new research looked at clouds that contain both liquid and ice water, known as mixed-phase clouds. Most climate models suggest that clouds will better be able to reflect light into space as global warming speeds up the melting of ice water into a liquid in coming decades. Liquid water tends to reflect more light back into space than ice.

According to the IPCC’s Working Group III report, carbon capture is one of the least-effective, most-expensive climate change mitigation options on Earth.

This week, oil and gas lobbyists are gearing up for a busy few days. Today, the IPCC — the UN experts on climate science — is publishing a new report on the impact of global warming and our best options to slow it down.

Carbon capture is having a moment, and it’s not hard to see why: As Texas Monthly reports, “the worldwide carbon-capture market is expected to grow from about $2 billion this year to about $7 billion in 2028.”

Last year’s bipartisan infrastructure law devotes billions to advancing the technology, and the new Senator Joe Manchin-approved climate compromise bill would do more to bolster the industry. Meanwhile, atmospheric CO2 levels have now reached their highest levels in human history, and the Supreme Court’s recent ruling, which limits the federal government’s power to reduce climate pollution, is making techno-fixes all the more appealing.

Carbon capture and storage is an old technology, first commercialized in the 1970s. Back then it was called enhanced oil recovery, because the carbon dioxide recovered from oil and gas production was injected into depleted oil and gas reservoirs to re-pressurize them and extract more hydrocarbons.

As the climate change movement gained momentum, the oil and gas industry wisely rebranded enhanced oil recovery as a “climate-friendly” process with a new name: carbon capture utilization and storage. Today, over 70 percent of carbon capture projects are, in fact, enhanced oil recovery projects used to produce more oil and/or gas, resulting in yet more greenhouse gas emissions.

The unproven scalability of CCS technologies and their prohibitive costs mean they cannot play any significant role in the rapid reduction of global emissions necessary to limit warming to 1.5 C. Despite the existence of the technology for decades and billions of dollars in government subsidies to date, deployment of CCS at scale still faces insurmountable challenges of feasibility, effectiveness and expense.

Existing CCS facilities capture less than 1 percent of global carbon emissions.

CCS and CCUS refer to processes that collect or “capture” carbon dioxide generated by high-emitting activities — such as coal- and gas-fired power production or plastics manufacturing — and then transport those captured emissions to sites where they are either used for industrial processes or stored underground.1 2

CCS does not remove carbon from the atmosphere, although it is often erroneously conflated with “CO2 removal” or “negative emission” technology. At best, CCS prevents some emissions caused by the combustion of carbon-based fuels from reaching the atmosphere — provided that the captured gases are not later released.

CCS can increase the water requirements of a power plant by anywhere from 56% to 90%. Together, CO2 and water form carbonic acid, which can leach toxic metals out of rocks. CO2 seeping into water supplies from deep underground has been shown to make water dangerous to drink. Water that has been in contact with CO2 can leach arsenic, uranium, radium, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury and selenium into the water at levels that exceed federal drinking water standards. In short, CO2 seeping into water can make it dangerous to drink for humans and animals.

Ultimately, CCS technology is a false climate solution that simply doesn’t work. It will only make harmful emissions worse, straining the health of overburdened communities and delaying our progress toward meaningful climate progress.

At every stage of the CCS process — from capture to transport to storage — deadly risks abound, according to hundreds of scientists.

CCS equipment to capture CO2 from the smokestack of a power plant requires energy to operate. To produce this energy, the power plant must burn 10% to 40% more fuel than a similar plant without CCS. (Scientists call this the “energy penalty” for using CCS.) Depending on the specific power plant, burning this additional fuel can release even more deadly toxic pollution — sulfur oxides (SOx), nitrogen oxides (NOx), arsenic, mercury, cadmium, lead, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and ultra-fine particles (PM2.5). These toxicants are associated with many different illnesses, including heart attacks, cancer, asthma, low birth weight, birth defects, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and brain damage in children. As epidemiologist and toxicologist Devra Davis and others have said, “Reductions in burning of fossil fuels can yield powerful, immediate benefits to public health by reducing the adverse effects of local air pollution.” Some toxicants emitted by fossil fuel used for CCS processes, such as benzene, ethylbenzene, and n-hexane, are listed as reproductive or developmental toxicants and carcinogens under Prop 65 and thus are recognized as such by the State of California.