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305 - A Simple Plan feat. Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski (4/11/19) (Patreon)

Published:
2019-04-11 07:31:02
Edited:
2020-07-08 18:49:14
Imported:
2020-07

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Content

We're joined by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski, authors of the new book "The People's Republic of Walmart," to discuss how mega-corporations like Walmart and Amazon function as planned economies, and how we as socialists can apply what we learn from them to problems from health care to climate change.

People's Republic of Walmart by Verso Books: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2822-the-people-s-republic-of-walmart

We also mention Leigh's first book "Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts." You can find that here: http://www.zero-books.net/books/austerity-ecology-collapse-porn-addicts

Brendan's Baffler review of the book: https://thebaffler.com/latest/stick-to-the-plan-james

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Comments

Jevon Clement

Generating the electricity is half the battle. Storing and mobilizing it will require insane amounts of metals like lithium and cobalt. For example, to replace the 2 billion gasoline powered cars on roads now would require 2x the current mining rates for lithium and 4x the mining rates for cobalt. Most of these metals are mined in developing countries. More than half the cobalt mined in the world comes from the democratic replublic of Congo using child labour. Do we even have enough of these metals if we decided to enact things like the Green New Deal? Maybe, but we would completely exhaust the supply of these metals for future generations and destroy vast swathes of the environment. Leigh Phillips is just a tech utopian like Elon Musk, Steven Pinker etc except he’s a socialist. Nature is telling us we can no longer afford to live the way we are eg. Sixth mass extinction but we are in denial of this.

Anonymous
>>24405615

Let the professionals handle the renewable problem. You keep doing whatever it is you do

Jevon Clement
>>24405615

I'm an environmental chemist, so yes I will keep doing that. Thanks bro!

Grace Van de Pas

Phillips speaks with a sense of certainty that our modern understanding of the planet does not warrant. He narrows the problem of the climate crisis to an issue of burning fossil fuel (only around half of anthropogenic emissions), but more importantly, blithely glosses over the extinction crisis, which many ecologists argue is even more urgent. We're not just burning fuel, we're also burning down the rainforests, dredging up the coral reefs, etc. The broader ecological crisis we face is driven more directly by behaviors such as agriculture, pollution, and wildlife exploitation than it is by fossil fuel. While there are temporary technological solutions (such as precision fermentation and stem cell culturing, which I'm kind of shocked he didn't mention) that may allow us to prolong consumption patterns and still stave off the worst effects of the crisis, all of these technologies still require resources (rare earth metals with EV batteries is a more pressing example), and resources are ultimately not infinite. Degrowth is less about a doomsday shame gospel by the "green left", as Phillips loves to say, and more about coming to terms with the fact that infinite growth cannot occur on a finite planet and dismantling the notion that social and economic progress is measured in GDP or production. I would suggest reaching out to Jason Hickel as a counterpoint to the assertions Phillips makes in this episode. All that said, I thought the economic discussion about central planning was incredibly well-argued. He was brilliant on economy, overconfident on ecology.