by From Yanis Varoufakis It [capitalism] has always gained pace through the incessant commodification of everything, beginning with land, labour and technology before spreading to genetically modified organisms, and even a woman’s womb or an asteroid. As capitalism’s realm spread, price-less goods turned into pricey commodities. The owners of the machinery and the land necessary for the commodification of goods profited, while everyone else progressed from the wretchedness of the 19th century working class to the soothing fantasies of mindless petit-bourgeois consumerism. Everything that was good was commodified – including much of our humanity. And the bad externalities that the same production process generated were simply released into the atmosphere. To power the capitalist
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from Yanis Varoufakis
It [capitalism] has always gained pace through the incessant commodification of everything, beginning with land, labour and technology before spreading to genetically modified organisms, and even a woman’s womb or an asteroid. As capitalism’s realm spread, price-less goods turned into pricey commodities. The owners of the machinery and the land necessary for the commodification of goods profited, while everyone else progressed from the wretchedness of the 19th century working class to the soothing fantasies of mindless petit-bourgeois consumerism.
Everything that was good was commodified – including much of our humanity. And the bad externalities that the same production process generated were simply released into the atmosphere. To power the capitalist juggernaut, carbon stored for millennia in trees and under the surface was plundered. For two centuries immense wealth – and corresponding human misery – was produced by exploitative processes that depleted “free” natural capital, carbon in particular. Workers around the world are now paying the cost to nature that the capitalist market never bore.
Free-marketeers would like us to believe that business has now yielded to science, and is ready and willing to step into the void of government inaction. We must not believe this for a moment. Yes, Carney is right that the money for the belated green transition is available, and it is ample. Those who possess it will undoubtedly invest it to supply, say, green hydrogen if we, society, pay them to do so. But at the same time, they will not voluntarily cease production processes that continue releasing carbon into the atmosphere.
This is why polluters adore net zero targets: because they are a brilliant cover for not restricting emissions. In exchange for non-verifiable offsets, they are allowed to continue plundering the planet’s remaining stored carbon, until the point arrives when their marginal private cost surpasses their revenue from the last unit sold. By cynically placing net zero at its centre, Cop26 became nothing more than an expensive cover-up for continued toxic emissions. Hiding behind Cop26, the great and the good lie to the young, lie to vulnerable people and even lie to themselves by repeating the truth that the “money is there” to be invested in the planet’s salvation.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/10/cop26-doomed-net-zero