Green capitalism fails not only to stop climate change, but the coming wave of authoritarian nationalism stoked by populism—it’s try or die for the alt

There is an important fraction of the US ruling class and global TCC that links the future of capitalism to green accumulation. This includes well-known US figures, and green billionaires from Europe, China, India, and elsewhere. TCC links abound as with Wang Chuanfu, founder of the solar cell and electric car company BYD. Wang connects to Warren Buffet whose original $232 million BYD investment is now worth $1.5 billion (The Economist, 2019). Overall, the political spectrum spans neoliberals to neo-Keynesians, but all see a new historic round of accumulation in the expansion of the green economy. There is a broad field of green think tanks, NGOs, funders, and green enterprises. Think tanks and NGOs are concentrated in Europe and the US, but China, Japan, and India have major green TNCs active around the world. Green capitalism divides into three general fractions. All seek reforms within the capitalist system, but differences exist over the role of markets and government, an emphasis on lobbying and conference negotiations rather than mass movements and linking issues of social justice to environmental transformation. These are seen in the activities of corporate-funded policy groups, philanthropic supported NGOs, and Left activists of the GND. Whether these fractions coalesce into a hegemonic bloc is an open question. Rather than tracing the ownership, production, and markets of the major green corporations, which I detail elsewhere (Harris, 2010, 2013), the following will concentrate on the policy differences among major groups, their networks, and leading figures. Philanthropic Funders Twenty-five foundations constitute over 90 percent of the funding for NGOs concerned with climate change (Morena, 2016, 10). Of these, six make up 70 percent of such funding: the Hewlett Foundation; the Packard Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation; the Energy Foundation; the Oak Foundation; and Sea Change (Morningstar, 2019, 173). Examining these philanthropies is a good starting point to understand the money and interests behind the green capitalist project. With $8.74 billion in assets Hewlett is among the most influential funders. Larry Kramer, president of the Hewlett Foundation and former dean of Stanford Law School argues that a green project needs to replace neoliberalism. Because Kramer’s analysis is perhaps the most comprehensive strategy it’s worth examining at some length. As he explains, …today’s prevailing intellectual paradigm—which has come to be labeled ‘neoliberalism’…has proven unable to provide satisfactory answers to problems like wealth inequality, wage stagnation, economic dislocation due to globalization, and loss of jobs and economic security due to technology and automation…circumstances are ripe for the emergence of a new intellectual paradigm—a different way to think about political economy and the terms for a new 21st century social contract. Helping develop and communicate such ideas is a task well suited to philanthropy (Hewlett Foundation, 2018, 2). Kramer has a broad historical understanding of hegemonic blocs. In recounting the triumph of neoliberalism he notes how its victory “in favor of free market orthodoxy in the 1970s and ‘80s reshaped the entire world…Fiscal policy, monetary policy, labor policy, trade policy, welfare policy and industrial policy (and) similarly colonized law, political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, public policy…corporate governance, how workers and executives are paid, and how the financial sector operates” (ibid, 6). Thus, when Kramer argues for replacing neoliberalism, he is looking to reshape capitalism. Moreover, Kramer knows how organization and money are key to creating hegemonic ideas. He writes, The triumph of market ideology did not occur organically. It was, in fact, an intentional, cultivated, and—most important for present purposes—well-funded effort…the free market movement was paid for—backed every step of the way by sympathetic foundations and philanthropists who provided the resources to succeed (ibid, 6). Kramer states both Republicans and Democrats supported neoliberalism and “share the blame” for today’s social upheavals. “The upshot is that the 20th century free market paradigm has reached the end of its useful shelf life. There is little or no room left within it for useful solutions, or even productive disagreement about alternatives” (ibid, 17). This is where philanthropy comes in, to fund various think-tank to create a new narrative that can evolve into a counter-hegemonic force and replace neoliberalism. This work is already well underway, and Kramer mentions a dozen institutions in the US and Europe. Kramer’s major weakness is his lack of understanding of how quickly conditions can change when explosive social contradictions come to a head. While he stresses the role of intellectuals in creating hegemonic ideology, he demonstrates no recognition that mass movements are key in creating social transformations. His conception of building a counter hegemonic project is conceived in similar terms to the long and patient road taken by neoliberalism. But the environmental crisis may not be so patient, nor the working class and current generation of youth activists. Kramer has an elite strategy that understands the ruling class, without any real comprehension of the explosive social forces gathering below. As for key characteristics of the other major philanthropies, we can begin with the Packard Foundation, whose funding of $6.3 billion originates from the Packard family of Hewlett-Packard. It has given out $930 million to NGOs working on global climate change, funding 193 organizations in 14 different countries (Packard Foundation, 2020). Most of the board members have backgrounds in government, philanthropy, and academia, particularly in health and environment. Corporate experience usually comes from the tech sector, and half of the board are alumni of Stanford University, a network that runs through much of environmental philanthropy and West Coast wealth. Sea Change was founded in 2006 by Nathaniel and Laura Baxter-Simons. Its exclusive focus is clean energy policies and climate change. Simons was a board member of Renaissance Technologies, a Silicon Valley investment group founded by his father. He co-founded the clean-tech investment fund Prelude Ventures, and is involved with the UC Berkeley-Tsinghua Joint Research Center on Energy and Climate Change (Wikipedia, 2020a). Simons’ estimated net worth is $10.6 billion, and Forbes ranks him as the 74th-richest person in the world. A major effort of Sea Change was to help launch Climate Action100+, a group of 320 investors with over $33 trillion in assets under management, to pressure the largest corporate greenhouse emitters to curb emissions. Thus, Sea Change has strong ties to the green sector of finance and capitalists who see both opportunity and danger in the environmental crisis. The Energy Foundation headquartered in San Francisco is a unique creation. It was incorporated by the MacArthur Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Pew Charitable Trust in 1990 and acts as a conduit for other foundations, taking in grants and distributing funds. Its main funders have been Hewlett, Packard, Sea Change, McKnight, and MacArthur. But other familiar names appear such Google, Bloomberg, and the Schmidt Family Foundation. Jason Mark is CEO and previously worked for the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton (Energy Foundation, 2020). Between 1998 and 2015 the Energy Foundation made more than 30,000 grants totaling over $1.2 billion to some 12,000 recipients. It connected to the China Sustainable Energy Program with a $22 million grant from the Packard and Hewlett foundations. The Rockefeller Foundation, alongside Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, have substantial ties to financial institutions. Board members include: Richard Parsons, Chair of Providence Equity Partners and previously Chairman of Citigroup and Time Warner; Mellody Hobson, board Vice-Chair of Starbucks and a director of JPMorgan Chase; Martin L. Leibowitz, Vice-Chair of the Morgan Stanley Global Strategy Team; Yifei Li, Chair for Man Group in China, one of the world’s largest hedge funds with assets over $60 billion; and Jim Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander at NATO and Operating Executive and Chair of The Carlyle Group (Rockefeller Foundation, 2020). Like Kramer, President of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Stephen Heintz has an expansive criticism of capitalism. He states the systemic crisis stems from the growing obsolescence of three core operating systems that have shaped civilization for the past 350 years: capitalism, fueled by carbon since the dawn of the Industrial Age and increasingly driven by global financialization; the nation-state system, formalized by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648; and representative democracy …our practice of capitalism is both putting the planetary ecosystem at risk and generating vast economic inequality... (nation-states are) inadequate for managing transnational challenges like global warming…(and) representative democracy is neither truly representative nor very democratic as citizens feel that self-rule has given way to rule by corporations, special interests and the wealthy (Cohen, 2020). The Oak Foundation, like most philanthropies, has several areas of social justice concern, but environmental issues receive the most funding. Oak has its headquarters in Geneva, with offices in Denmark, India, the UK, the US, and Zimbabwe. It has made grants to some 4,000 organizations, and supported groups in Brazil, Canada, China, Europe, India, Southeast Asia, and the US. The budget for their environmental arm is set at $57 million a year. British-born Alan Parker is founder and main funder, having co-founded Hong Kong-based Duty Free Shoppers. His net worth is estimated at $2.34 billion. His grandson Kristian Parker heads the environmental program and carries a doctorate in Environmental Sciences. Between 1999 and 2018 Oak gave out more than $780 million in grants in over 36 countries (Influence Watch, 2020). Reviewing philanthropy board memberships reveals a mix from corporate governmental and academic fields. Virtually absent are representatives from the fossil fuel industry or military-industrial complex. Instead we see a nucleus of transnational elites dedicated to promoting green technology, with West Coast tech capitalists emerging as the most represented fraction. Visible in this network of philanthropies is the core of a hegemonic bloc with global reach, promoting a common accumulation strategy, and united by a shared political/social vision that rejects neoliberalism. Corporate-Funded Policy Groups Parallel to philanthropic foundations, which are often the creation of individual capitalist families, are corporate-funded environmental policy groups. Jean Philippe Sapinski (2016) did a detailed study of the 11 most influential. These do intensive lobbying and participate in the UN Climate Change Conferences known as COP. Each have their niche, but the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD, 2020), established for transnational CEOs and tied to the International Chamber of Commerce, is the most significant. In terms of corporate board representation among these key policy groups, energy corporations make up the largest industrial sector (48 corporations). Five are exclusively green energy firms, the others have renewables as one division among diversified investments. The next largest group are business consultants, law firms, and accountant firms involved as lobbyists, advisors, or legal representatives of companies concerned with energy and the environment. Banks and financial institutions have 23 representatives, but only one US financial firm participates in groups from North America. The strongest energy and financial ties exist among the three most networked core groups, the WBCSD, the Copenhagen Climate Council, and the International Emissions Trading Association. As Sapinski explains, The project is driven by a section of the corporate elite that seeks to establish new bases for accumulation within a broadly neoliberal order. Hence the stated goal of climate capitalism is, in the long-term, to divert financial flows from the oil and coal sectors…and redirect them to support the ecological modernization of capitalist production process. Corporate-funding…activities are crucial to conceptualize the new regime and mobilize broad corporate elite support for it. As well, the network they assemble constitute an essential infrastructure around which the climate capitalist section can organize (Sapinski, 2016). We can take a brief look at the core groups that Sapinski identifies. The WBCSD is the most formidable with over 200 TNC members, with revenues of $8.5 trillion and 19 million workers. The Executive Committee is a transnational gathering of CEOs representing world-spanning corporations that include: Shell, Nestlé, Microsoft, Banco Santander, Toyota, Unilever, and lesser known in the popular press, ArcelorMittal (India-Belgium, steel), ENGIE (France, energy), Natura (Brazil, cosmetics), and Sinopec (China, oil) (WBCSD, 2020). Founded in 2007 the Copenhagen Climate Council (CCC) was formed to provide “strong support from the international business community” in UN COP climate change policy discussions and has strong ties throughout Europe as well as China (Storm, 2020). Founded by Erik Rasmussen it brings together business leaders, policy makers, and scientists. Among its Councilors are Sir Richard Branson (CEO of Virgin), Samuel DiPiazza, Jr. (CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers), Ditlev Engel (former CEO of Vestas Wind Systems), Paul Otellini (president and CEO of Intel), Zhengrong Shi (president and CEO of Suntech), Li Xiaolin (CEO of China Electric Power International), and James Rogers (president and CEO of Duke Energy) (Wikipedia, 2020b). Lastly, the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) helps TNCs find market solutions for climate change. Its main function is to create a framework for carbon trading, and it represents a full spectrum of carbon corporations. IETA maintains a staff of policy experts in the US, Canada, the UK, Switzerland, Belgium, New Zealand, and China. Half the board turns over yearly, but among the 2019 board members corporate representatives included Bank of America, BP, Chevron, Shell, and perhaps less familiar, BHP (Australia, mining), CLP (Hong Kong, sustainable energy), Enel (Italy, energy), DeMarco Allan (Canada, climate law firm), Mitsui (Japan, metals, energy), and Suncor (Canada, tar sands) (IETA, 2020). Other corporate members include Koch, Rio Tinto, Total, and Dow. Comparing philanthropic and corporate-funded policy groups we see lines of distinct interests with significant differences in board membership and network patterns. While some overlaps exist, corporate-funded policy groups advocate a neoliberal approach to climate solutions with significant ties to energy and industrial TNCs. These corporations want to slow the pace of change while shaping future regulations to their benefit. Both wings of green accumulation seek what Antonio Gramsci termed a “passive revolution.” As social theorist William Carroll explains, Climate capitalism fits the Gramscian notion of passive revolution quite well…(it) offers a system affirming response to the climate crisis which tugs at consumerist hearts and technocratic minds, averts the need for any leap into unknown territory, and seems to carry minimal costs; promises to reconfigure the forces of production to avert runaway climate change, yet protects the relations of production which form the nucleus of a now-global, class dominated way of life; and portends a molecular shift in the historical bloc, as fossil capital enters managed decline while renewable energy substitutes (and associated workforces) develop under the control of big capital (Carroll, 2020). A passive revolution also incorporates movement leaders and activists, and in this arena, philanthropies are deeply involved. Undercutting the viability of a green capitalism is the hold neoliberal ideology maintains within the corporate and financial sector. As Sapinski notes most climate capitalists are “profoundly anchored in neoliberal ideals of corporate self-regulation, limited state intervention, and technology fetishism (italics in the original)” (Sapinski, 2016). Such ideology will reproduce all the existing problems of inequality, social conflicts, and market failures that have marked globalization. At a deeper level competitive rationality greatly weakens the ability of capitalism to respond to the environmental crisis. For example, steep drops in solar panel prices created two large-scale recessions in the industry. With a drop in price came a drop in profits and the bankruptcy of dozens of companies. Connected to the price drop was also a crisis of overproduction, with the market unable to consume the number of panels produced. In 2012 solar production in China exceeded global demand by 33 percent resulting in its two largest solar firms going bankrupt alongside dozens of others worldwide. Only in capitalism could the rapid production of a desperately needed technology at a low price produce an economic crisis. The two dominant blocs in the twentieth century were Keynesianism and neo-liberalism. Both consolidated the capitalist class around a social, political, and economic ideology that defined and structured the relations of production between labor and capital. For Keynesianism the model of accumulation centered on expanding the social contract, recognition of labor rights, secure jobs, higher wages, and greater consumption. Moreover, it was flexible enough when confronted by the civil rights and the women’s movement to encompass some of their key demands. Neo-liberalism slashed the social contracts, broke unions, and instituted austerity and flexibility into the workforce that resulted in less security, lower wages, and the precariatization of the working class. Militarized accumulation takes the full neo-liberal model, and extends its repressive character on all fronts, using racism and reactionary nationalism to control working-class anger. But green capitalism has no unifying ideology. Internally split between Keynesianism and neoliberalism, it offers no comprehensive social model of accumulation. Meanwhile, large sections of the green social base have moved to Left social democracy. The result is no common vision of social relations exist. The political split over the programmatic orientation of green capitalism was seen in the Democratic Party primaries, with Bloomberg representing the neoliberal wing and Bernie Sanders the Green New Deal. Tom Steyer and Governor Jay Inslee positioned themselves in the center, taking an approach common to environmental NGOs and philanthropic funds. What was new is for the first-time different wings of green capitalism contested for leadership in the presidential primary. Which sector wins out and defines the structure of capital/labor relations will determine the success of the project. Lacking any real appeal to the working class, green neo-liberalism cannot defeat authoritarian capitalism. If green neoliberalism wins leadership their passive revolution will fail to attract the necessary popular base, and their dedication to the market will fail to fully address the crisis. An even greater danger is the merger between neoliberal greens and the authoritarian TCC fraction. Neoliberalism has always been comfortable with technocratic authoritarian rule, well isolated from democratic input. Therefore, fractions promoting repressive and green accumulation may forge a political accommodation. Such an alliance might come about under pressure from massive flows of environmental refugees, resulting in an econationalism that pursues strict borders closures, more internment camps and competition over shrinking resources.