The very system that engenders our ecological suicide, values economic expansion over life, the economy over ecology and shopping over a sustainable future will soon claim it is going to save not only life on earth but itself at the same time. Timid NGOs – from Greenpeace to the New Economics Foundation – are jumping on the bandwagon, and will soon be followed by desperate corporations and governments greenwashing themselves in the hope that they will rebuild confidence and rake in profits from a new market. But it's a wagon that, despite a repaint, is still heading for the precipice.
Not only will the deal continue to be based on the fantasy logic of a growth economy with no tethers to the real limits of the biosphere, but it will include a "carbon army" of "green collar workers" – no doubt forced off welfare (which will be cut away as we pay off the bail-outs) into poorly paid and alienating green jobs. Meanwhile, fossil fuel corporations will be hit with a windfall tax that will be used to "deal with the effects of climate change." It all sounds suspiciously like the old capitalism to me.
What we need is a new logic, not a new deal. Eighteenth century abolitionists didn't advocate a tax on slavery: they wanted it stopped. We shouldn't tax fossil fuels, but stop them being pumped out of the ground. Similarly, we don't need new jobs but new definitions of work.
We need a new way of thinking about what has value, how we feed ourselves, how we live together, how we build culture, democracy and politics and how we connect to the natural world. None of us will ever see such an opportunity again.
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