Jeff Dardozzi: Carbon dioxide — the effluent of wealth

The Following is a reprint of an article at: https://vtdigger.org/2020/09/11/jeff-dardozzi-carbon-dioxide-the-effluent-of-wealth/

One hundred and fifty-five years ago this nation laid to rest, with great sacrifice and bloodshed, the greatest question of its day: chattel slavery. This “peculiar institution” of the South was, to a large extent, a controversy over a morally repugnant but abundant source of cheap energy that returned 8%-14% per annum. In those days carbon dioxide emissions were not the scientific metric used to determine the social impact of energy use. It was the direct observation of the grotesque abominations of a ruling class who accrued enormous wealth from the enslavement of human beings. According to 1860 census data, the median wealth of the richest 1% of slave-holding Southerners was more than three times higher than for the richest 1% of Northerners. Wealth distribution in the antebellum South also had the top 10% owning 75% of all the wealth.

When you apply the same optics to the climate crisis facing humanity today, we find essentially the same forces at work and the same inequality. The politics that robbed so many of life and liberty for 400+ years also now threatens the life and liberty of present and future generations through the destruction of the natural world – all for the benefit of a very small percentage of the world’s population. It is no coincidence that at the very heart of the problem is another abundant, cheap and socially malignant use of energy that allows a few to live extraordinary well at the expense of many.

However, to hide this fact, we are constantly insulted by the mainstream media and the dominant institutions of our society with the insinuation that we all share equally in the responsibility for the climate crisis, and therefore we must all equally share in the burden of mitigating it. We are admonished endlessly to buy electric cars, insulate our homes, install heat pumps, solar panels and save energy. Most importantly, we are lectured about the need to fork over even more public wealth to expand public and private bureaucracies and subsidies for industry to “solve” the climate crisis.

Fortunately, the data on emissions is the smoking gun left at the scene of the crime, and it tells a very different story. The truth is only a very small percentage of the world’s population bears the bulk of the responsibility for the vast majority of CO2 emissions. They are the ones who have materially benefited beyond imagination in comparison to the rest of us. The following two graphs from OXFAM illustrate this fact:

It is important to note that these charts reveal only emissions from “lifestyle” consumption. Left out of the metrics is the role energy plays in accumulating and sustaining wealth, not just spending it. Cheap energy today is just as critical to accumulating and maintaining vast wealth as it was in the 19th century South.

Due to the energy-intensive nature of industrial production and post industrial economies, the order of magnitude is significantly greater as evidenced in the first chart below. These charts also illustrate the synchronous relationship in global energy use and GDP. Shadowing the relentless rise in both energy consumption and GDP are CO2 emissions, as evidenced in the second chart which also reveals the absolute failure of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change to its change course.

During this same time period, the great divergence in income inequality began to emerge, as the top 10% of households began restructuring the economy to lay claim to almost all of the wealth being created. Left out of income metrics, of course, are asset values (stocks, bonds, capital gains, real estate, business holdings) which compose a large part of the wealth of upper classes. Governments the world over, democratic and otherwise, have been subjected to near total capture by corporate power which operates as a proxy for the vast wealth of a few, and the value of these holdings are inextricably bound to energy consumption. Corporate capture is also behind the failure of inter-governmental efforts to address the problem, since any effort to reduce energy consumption threatens to constrain growth, which in turn threatens the wealth of the few.

Confounding the problem is the observation physicist and atmospheric scientist Tim Garrett has noted in his work on the relationship between energy and wealth. In order to sustain the wealth that now exists requires not only maintaining the current flows of energy through the global economy, but also requires increasing energy consumption to generate more growth. Garret observed that “… quantitative analysis reveals that in any given year, the historical accumulation of past global economic production has had a fixed ratio to the current rate of global energy consumption, give or take a couple of percent. In each year between 1970 and 2016, each additional one thousand U.S. dollars of net worth that we collectively added to civilization through the global inflation-adjusted GDP has required an additional 5.6 Watts of continuous power production capacity.”

Growth must never be allowed to be constrained, otherwise the massive wealth of the few evaporates. This is why we are constantly told that growth is the answer to all of society’s problems when, in fact, it only solves a problem of the wealthy few. Walter Scheidel, author of “The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty First Century,” observed in his sweeping analysis of economic inequality over the last 10,000 years that “… there is hardly any credible scenario in which economic growth will fail to cause absolute inequality to rise.”

Yet every politician and the governments of every state aggressively promotes growth as the only solution to social and environmental ills. The Energy Information Agency is now projecting a 50% increase in global energy demand over the next 30 years due to the growth dictates of the rich. All that increasing energy use is, of course, about turning even more of nature into commodities. The much promised decoupling of the economy from its material base predicted by economists over the last two decades has not occurred. More energy consumption and growth will only have negative consequences for future generations, and the planet, all so the few can get even richer. You can still destroy the planet manufacturing solar panels and electric cars.

It is clear who is and has been benefiting the most from destroying the biosphere. It is unfortunate that all the industry spin and the policies and programs advocated by the state of Vermont, such as Efficiency Vermont, TCI, the Global Warming Solutions Act, renewable energy mandates, etc., are all ultimately about keeping this arrangement going under the charade of concern for the planet. Unfortunately, endless growth and ever increasing energy consumption are an economic mandate to which no government or politician can deviate, and now we know why:

It should be obvious to the bottom 90% that the nature of our economy does nothing for them but chain them to a barren future of climate disasters set against a backdrop of increasingly dystopian scenes of police repression, material deprivation and insecurity. While the press can hide it from view, the data clearly shows that it is those with the preponderance of wealth and power who bear the greatest responsibility for the destruction of the biosphere. If history tells us anything – those at the top will do everything in their power to stick those at the bottom with the bill.