Responding to the climate crisis: Green consumerism or the Green New Deal?

Introduction: A meeting of science and the climate mobilisations

The climate scientists have done their work, not just in modelling the various destinations opened up by our current dominant socioeconomic model, but also in effectively communicating the situation through organisations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In particular, their 1.5 degree report (IPCC, 2018) envisioning changes that would keep climate change below this crucial threshold has constructed a clear and compelling case for action: the 12-year imperative (in early 2020, heading towards 10 years) within which action must take place to sustain a habitable world for humans and other species. This more accessible framing of the problem (mediated by scientist-activists such as John Sweeney and James Hansen) has resonated with a range of groups that have, particularly since late 2018 and 2019, mobilised in response to the crisis. Appearing before the US Congress in late 2019, Greta Thunberg stated that ‘I have not come to offer prepared remarks at this hearing … I am instead attaching my testimony. It is the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C’ (quoted in Weinberg, 2019). ‘Unite behind the science’ discourses thus reveal a novel alliance of scientists at the coalface of research, and activists willing to organise and disrupt business-as-usual in various ways. There has been a further fine-tuning of discourses by climate activists so that ‘climate emergency/meltdown/disruption/crisis,’ ‘global heating,’ and ‘rebellion’ have entered popular parlance in new ways, particularly since late 2018.

The visual impact of large numbers of global school strikers in September 2019, or of London coming to a standstill because of direct action and mass arrests in April (and again in October) 2019 has made for compelling media content. For those growing sections of the population in Ireland and beyond that are—at least in principle—on board (O’Sullivan, 2019) what might constitute meaningful responses to climate disruption, and what sort of media discourses are available to citizens as they seek to formulate positions on this basis? An emergency, after all, is more than a call to awareness; it is a call to action. Media discourses offer just one framing resource for a public that is seeking to respond meaningfully to the challenges of climate change; for example, framing by social movements could also need to be considered (Cox, 2018). Nevertheless (and noting that analysis of a wider range of online and offline media sources would be useful), it is of interest that preliminary analysis of one Irish broadsheet source seems to show an inverse relationship between the breadth and depth of the solutions offered and the extent of media coverage. Between 1 of February 2019 and the 1 of February 2020, 1133 articles in the Irish Times featured ‘electric cars’ or ‘electric vehicles’, just one product within the extensive repertoire of green consumerism. In comparison, only 221 articles featured the ‘Green New Deal’ or ‘Green Deal’, major policy initiatives backed by a range of national and international actors.

Green consumerism and neoliberalism

An exploration of media content and ‘solutions’ that are available in relation to climate disruption, would foreground the impact over 40 years of neoliberalism: on our media culture, our related ability to collectively imagine alternative social and economic models (there, supposedly, not being any) and thus on our ability to organise in common (Harvey, 2005). McGuigan (2014: 236) identifies ‘a neoliberal self, figuring a competitive individual who is exceptionally self-reliant and rather indifferent to the fact that his or her predicament is shared with others—and, therefore, incapable of organising as a group to do anything about it.’ This is a partial picture, and there are many examples of powerful and effective collective organisation during the period of dominance of neoliberalism in Ireland, movements ranging from the 2003 anti-war and 2014–2018 water charge protests to the current wave of climate protests.

At the same time, the threat of incorporation must be considered: the ongoing strength of a neoliberal consensus in political and media spheres can be seen to involve attempts to recuperate the social response to the climate crisis—its anxieties, hopes and fears—through offering market-based solutions and narrow, consumerist policy options. There are clear precedents for co-option of this sort of ecological politics: for example, according to Tulloch and Neilson (2014: 26) ‘sustainable development has been completely altered from a marginal counter-hegemonic radical movement into a platform for legitimating neoliberalism’s universalising project.’ In her study of the Irish environmental movement, Tovey (2007) noted that some participants saw themselves as operating primarily within a ‘personal responsibility’ framework that posited consumer choice as a valid exercise of agency. Lukacs (2017) has suggested that ‘steeped in a culture telling us to think of ourselves as consumers instead of citizens, as self-reliant instead of interdependent, is it any wonder we deal with a systemic issue by turning in droves to ineffectual, individual efforts?’

It is interesting to note that the terms of the current debate in Irish media are frequently located in the realm of consumption and our putative agency as consumers (though, again, further research is needed to quantify this). In recent coverage of a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) report it was stated:

respondents across all demographics stated that they believed they could make the biggest personal impact on climate action by using energy efficient products in their home (55%), using reusable drinking or shopping bags (49%) and making an attempt to cycle, walk or using public transport (49%). (O’Sullivan, 2019)

These emerging niche markets for more ‘conscious’ (and more affluent, as these products tend to come at premium) consumers in developed economies may involve some minimal easing of emissions. An apparent ecological content, however, conceals a host of externalised problems. For example, a dysfunctional global agri-food system has been heavily implicated in the generation of carbon, methane and nitrous oxide emissions (these last two are especially pernicious greenhouse gases) through the use of fertilisers, fuels for transport and farming at scale, and the energy required to rear livestock (Weis, 2007). In Ireland, such practices in agriculture contribute to 33% of total emissions (Pollack, 2019) and accounts to some extent for our position on the Climate Change Performance Index, ranking worst in Europe in 2018 and 2019 (Stop Climate Chaos, 2019). On this basis, one strand of green consumerism involves bypassing more climate-destructive conventional agriculture through, for example, the purchase of organic food. However, despite market growth particularly in the US and EU, in 2017, just 1.4% of land globally was farmed organically (Organic-market.info, 2020). Equally, market-based practices are vulnerable to economic downturns, when parsimony tends to trump ethics. In Ireland and the UK, organic market shares only returned to their pre-Great Recession figures in 2015 (Moore, 2015).

There is also the potential for some varieties of green consumerism to degenerate into a type of green ‘conspicuous consumption’ (Veblen,1994 [1899]) that may reproduce and amplify existing structural inequalities, alienating low-income groups from a culture that excludes them. Beyond this, even for those groups that engage with green consumerism, these processes have the effect of constraining action by a horizon of consumer choice and thus of defusing more meaningful political responses. Similar social and ecological externalities can be associated with a range of eco-products featured in media advertisements for electric and hybrid vehicles, ‘sustainable’ cruises, vegan burgers in McDonalds and so on (it is notable that electric vehicles feature prominently in the Irish government’s Climate Action Plan (2019)). This is the point where virtuous individualism crashes into the reality of wider social dysfunction and ecological crisis. Nothing is evident in these cases so much as a ‘business-as-usual’ (albeit versatile) capitalism testing new commodity frontiers. Differentiated markets of this sort foster a superficial, individualist autonomy, and are grist to the mill of contemporary market forces (McGuigan, 2014).

It is also evident that narrow policy solutions positioned within an individualist, consumer-responsibility framework—such as Macron’s ill-fated fuel tax—have tended to alienate sections of the working population from the challenges of confronting climate change. Those suffering under ongoing neoliberal austerity, whether through precarious work situations, mortgages or rent increases, may be receptive to the Gilets Jaunes slogan: ‘Macron is concerned with the end of the world … we are concerned with the end of the month’ (Goodman, 2019). These and similar policies can amount to a type of eco-austerity within a larger framework of a supposedly ‘green’ neoliberalism. They lay the costs of addressing climate change squarely on the shoulders of those who are already struggling from continued attacks related to post-2008 waves of austerity, rather than on the hugely profitable fossil fuel corporations. Such narrow state-led ecological politics also serves to drive a wedge between potential partners in an alliance to combat climate change.

Beyond TINA: The Green New Deal

In 1930s, Roosevelt’s New Deal paved the way for massive state investment in public infrastructure and job creation alongside a significant reining in of capital. This has provided a template and inspiration for work in the last two decades by climate justice activists and NGOs in search of a radical, unifying vision to blend social and ecological concerns (Green New Deal Group, 2020; Klein, 2019). Today, a number of distinct proposals are on the table. These differ, for example, in the national legislative frameworks through which they operate; their association with social movements, NGOs and/or political parties; and through offering more or less substantive change in relation to free-market dogma. While a detailed comparison is beyond the scope of this article, I will make some general observations.

A useful yardstick might be to recognise that the terrain of the state has been deeply impoverished by the ideological onslaught of the last four decades. Responding to the climate crisis means confronting a heavily captured, lethargic and often actively hostile set of political actors and institutions. For example, recent EU Commission ‘Green Deal (GD)’ need to be treated with some caution, given that ‘since 2010, just five oil and gas corporations (Shell, BP, Total, ExxonMobil and Chevron) and their fossil fuel lobby groups have spent at least a quarter of a billion euros buying influence at the heart of European decision-making’ (Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), 2019). As with green consumerism, threats of incorporation and ‘greenwashing’ need to be borne in mind.

On this basis, critiques from a more radical wing within ecological thought can usefully be considered in order to deepen and consolidate the GD policy framework. An eco-socialist critique would envision much deeper structural changes to the economy and society, and explore how a type of neo-Keynesianism might serve to consolidate rather than undermine capitalism through a supposedly ‘caring’ turn (Kovel, 2007). Equally, it has been argued from a ‘de-growth’ perspective that

a socio-ecological transformation capable of moving us beyond a growth-based economy would require an even more ambitious political vision. Massive investments in green infrastructure would have to be the first step in a bolder programme, gradually leading to a just and sustainable social system which is not predicated on infinite economic growth. (Mastini, 2019)

More substantial GND policy platforms have emerged in the US, where the Sunrise Movement has engaged with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). This group in turn has been influential within the Democratic Party and has garnered significant support from leading contenders in the 2020 primaries. In the EU, the ‘GND for Europe’, developed by the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) in alliance with a number of NGOs, strongly emphasises both social and ecological questions (GND for Europe, 2020). In these more radical iterations, the proposals constitute an explicit critique of the future-closing imperatives of an ideology that takes as its premise that ‘There Is No Alternative’ (TINA) (Queiroz, 2016). In the US, it ‘moves beyond the market-based instruments that have so far dominated climate policy-making … [and] envisions massive public investment to overhaul energy and transport infrastructure, extensive state support for green industries, and large-scale efforts to help workers through a federal job guarantee’ (Mastini, 2019). These more comprehensive forms of the GND would protect not alone our biosphere, but also a range of social groups that have suffered under neoliberal austerity and are likely to suffer further under forms of eco-austerity. Moreover, they would address a key ‘climate debt’ owed to the Global South by the Global North, the source after all of the vast bulk of global carbon emissions. They might be seen to combine a set of important and related analytical and strategic insights.

On the former, the floods, storms, heatwaves and social disruptions that increasingly confront us are a consequence not of human activity in general (allusions to the ‘Anthropocene’ notwithstanding) but of a highly contingent confluence of forces within contemporary capitalism (Foster, 2009). Climate change thus reveals, on a fundamental level, how unregulated capitalist markets and planning deficiencies most heavily impact on subordinated social groups and a subordinated natural world. Klein (2019: 33) notes that

the indifference to life that was expressed in the exploitation of individual workers on the factory floors has … trickled up to swallow our entire planet, turning fertile lands into salt flats, beautiful islands into rubble, and draining once vibrant reefs of their life and colour.

Questions of strategy flow directly from this analysis. According to Edition II of the GND for Europe,

building on years of painstaking collective work in ‘climate jobs’ campaigns across Europe, the GPW (Green Public Works) aims to guarantee decent work to all those who seek it, centred on living labour—the people who will make the transition—and managed by workers, working-class communities and the organisations that represent them. (Green New Deal for Europe, 2020)

Conclusion

I have argued in this article that, rather than subscribing to green consumerism, critically parsing the more substantial GND proposals (such as that formulated by DiEM25 in the EU) may offer more meaningful conceptual-political pathways concerned with the climate crisis. To return to the question of organic food, a broader GND vision would acknowledge ‘the need for creating new green jobs in rural communities: green and cottage industries, nature preservation, rewilding, organic farming, forestry and forest products, and other regenerative activities’ (GND for Europe, 2020). In the face of an ecocidal status quo, organising, pressurising and voting on this basis may lay the foundation for a radical and timely response. Further research into the imagined boundaries of our collective response to the climate crisis might consider the role of media discourses and the influence of market forces on these (Browne, 2015). Equally, ongoing pressure from old and new waves within the climate justice movement will be instrumental in highlighting more productive conceptions of agency (Cox, 2018).