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Topic: An ecosocialist action plan
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An ecosocialist action plan
on: January 21, 2014, 10:42

An ecosocialist action plan


Anders Ekeland,




1. Introduction – class struggle and emission reduction
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The bourgeoisie does not dare to send the climate bill to the working classes even if they wanted to. The workers will not accept that the rich continue their waste-full life-style while forcing others to a “protestant ethic” green life-style. This basic fact is also reflected in the international climate negotiations. The ”South”will not reduce its emissions while the ”North” just go on with their unsustainable “American way of life”


The key element of an ecosocialists action plan against climate change is to make the transition to a sustainable society a socially just one, in each country and on a global level. Fossil fuels must become gradually prohibitively expensive and ordinary people, the poorest layers in particular, must gain from this transition. In other words – the transition must clearly hurt the rich most.


Nobody knows how hard the transition will be, how much energy and resources can be saved when arms production is eliminated, when totally wasteful marketing is eliminated, when wasteful non-standardisation (for instance chargers for mobile phones) are eliminated. Nobody knows how fast and how much effort it will take before renewable energy gains dominance. The only thing we know is that the transition has to be made and that life afterwards will be of a higher quality since it will secure a decent level of sustainable welfare, the alternative being a short lived unsustainable “American way of life” welfare, which in the long run is no welfare at all.


Political mobilisation is needed to make this transition, but people will only be mobilized if there is a concrete vision of a more egalitarian and better society.


1. James Hansen’s “fee and dividend” proposal – the best starting point1


As the development of wind and solar energy in Germany shows, prices are important. Without the feed-in tariffs we would not have seen this development. But this renewable energy is so far just just a supplement to the fossil energy, so we are still on a un-sustainable course. In order to make fossil energy gradually prohibitively expensive, there must be a put “price on carbon”.


So far this has been done by setting up emission trading systems (ETS). This was implemented by the bourgeoisie in order that no real reductions should take place – as has become overwhelmingly clear since Rio, since Kyoto. The ETS was in fact created in order to avoid a carbon tax, which would be much easier implemented, has less loop-holes and with a democratically controlled distribution of the tax revenue.


The most recent proposal of a carbon tax with a socially just – and very simple – distribution is climate scientist and activist James Hansen’s “fee and diviend” proposal. The idea is to tax fossil fuel at the point of production or “in the port”, the tax collected is then distributed on a per capita basis. Since poor people use less fossil fuel they would have a clear net benefit and the money in their account each month would make them materially interested in increasing the taxation and reducing their carbon footprint – whether they believed in man-made climate change or not.


Such a material driving force is totally absent in an ETS. On the contrary, governments have been handing out for free property rights to companies, that is to capitalists.


The left have traditionally – and correctly – always opposed indirect consumption taxes, since the revenue only went directly to the state which is controlled by the ruling elites of society. But Hansen’s proposal is not such a regressive tax, but rather a progressive tax. Since the implementation of a “fee and dividend” system (progressive carbon tax) in a country will reduce its international competitiveness it must at the same time implement protective “carbon tariffs”, so called “border adjustment taxes”.


2. The key political objectives of the next three years

The ecosocialists must:


Get all organisations of the left and the workers movement to realize the fraudulent nature of ETSs, especially the Clean Development Mechanism and the socially totally unacceptable giving away of property rights “emission quotas” to private capital, creating no real emission reductions, but fortunes from trading property rights.

To make the “fee and dividend” system the primary mechanism for reducing the emissions in a socially just way of the left wing groups and parties. A tax on carbon will stimulate green employment.

Try to get the European Left Party to propose a fee and dividend system to replace the European ETS. The current ecosocialists strategy of the EL being a way to general statement with little political appeal to ordinary people2.

Likewise the ecosocialists must try to get the left to demand that all tax on fuel used in international air and sea transport is placed at the disposal of the UN to be distributed in a way that supports a transition to renewable energy in the global “South”–especially in transport technology so that electric bicycles and cars become the totally dominant way of private transportation in the big, fast growing economies.

In order to promote sustainable agriculture ecologically produced foodstuffs must not be more expensive than “industrial food”; either the same or subsidised prices.

Campaign for congestion charges in the big cities the revenue being redistributed in a socially just way to the public, to build public green transport infrastructure and support the development of … WHAT?


Without a socially just carbon tax – we are heading for “game over” for the climate!


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