Well, going back to the capitalism question, first: we have an energy system that for the most part is controlled by a small class of people who seek profit, and that's their only intention with the production of energy. It often entails a lot of long-term fixed capital investments that have to pay off for decades to come. So, there's this sort of vested capital sunk into this fossil fuel industry and infrastructure. And they're really hell bent on making sure those investments continue to give them returns for a long time. So as long as it's profitable to produce fossil fuels, there's going to be capitalists who are doing so.
And what's really striking is just how profitable fossil fuels have been -- just in the last year or two. I mean, they're reporting record profits. And again, you would think we're a society that's sort of getting serious about climate change, but you would have to question that fundamental profit motive that is still directing our energy systems toward fossil fuels. And it's not just oil and gas in Alaska. I mean, coal has had a boom year -- record profits all across the board. Much of it having to do with these geopolitical shifts away from natural gas and so forth. But anyway, it's madness.
And the second problem with capitalism is that we just sort of cede economic governance to this naturalized realm of the market. And we just sort of assume what the market says is correct and we can't control it. We can't influence it. And the market is continuing to say it's very profitable to produce fossil fuels. So, we act like we're sort of helpless, and the best we can do is just throw out some tax credits to try to incentivize investors to go in the right direction.
But it seems pretty clear to anyone paying attention that it's going to require a lot more than that. It's going to require actually taking control of the economy and planning a rapid phase out of fossil fuels and planning an energy transition that's really about building long term infrastructure -- things like, the interstate highway system; things like, sewage treatment and sanitation. I mean, this is a public works problem that we face, but yet the leaders still continue to act as if we can just put some market tweaks out there that will allow the market to save us. And it's so clear it's not happening, but we still do it.
Hawkins:
Is there an actual class hierarchy in America?
Huber:
Yeah. And what Climate Change as Class War tries to argue is that climate change is talked about a lot as a problem of that class hierarchy, and it's often referred to in terms of carbon inequality. But that analysis typically only looks at that higher income or rich wealthy consumer, in particular ways, that have higher carbon footprints and therefore create more emissions through their consumption. And what I try to point out is that that way of thinking about the class hierarchy only looks at class as though it were just about people's income and their consumption power.
And of course, I try to argue for a Marxist theory of class that really looks at people's power as owners and investors, and at people that are actually profiting off the production of fossil fuels and other carbon intensive forms of production, and that we really need to target the owners, the investors -- how they profit from the types of investments ConocoPhillips is hoping to make in Alaska.
Focusing on consumers conceals the [profiteering] class that's really responsible for climate change. We need to actually build the power to confront [them], if we're going to solve climate change. So, I try to reshape how we think about the class hierarchy. It's not just about upper class and middle class and lower class, based on income and wealth. It's about owners and the small minority of people who actually own capital and live off their investments and their ownership of property, whereas the vast majority of people don't own a lot. They have to work for a living.
And it's very clear that the larger working class, or even the salaried professional class, don't have real power over how our energy system is run -- how and what decisions shape its operations on a real material level. And so, this vision of the class hierarchy is more classical socialist, where it's like the minority at the top control everything and the masses would have to rise up to confront their power.
Hawkins:
Yeah, I was reading a book, about six months ago, that reminded the reader that the American Constitution was really originally a property owner's constitution, and wasn't going to be ratified until the Amendments were forced in and ordinary American citizens had a Bill of Rights that changed everything. And you can sometimes see in our society that it's still property owners versus the People. And we've been seeing over the past few years a falsified patriotism that includes a hue and cry about the Flag, while the right wing erodes the Bill of Rights and returns the Constitution to its rightful owner - the landed gentry.
You know, Chomsky has said that the three main crises facing humanity and civilization tight now are climate change, the threat of nukes, and the end of democracy. But Americans can't do it alone. How do we fix that? We're just not doing anything with the UN. The United Nations is just a paper lion. All of the problems that are happening in the world today are because we're not using the United Nations properly. Global issues should be resolved there. And there are so many global issues. And then it turns out that the elite Security Council has that same 'class' divide we've been talking about. The General Assembly are left with making 'great speeches.' And, then you see a Security Council that's at war with itself, almost literally -- Chinese, Russians and Americans all sort of coming together, clashing swords. So where would you start to change this?
Huber:
Well, my book makes an old Marxist argument that the if the problem is capitalism and capital, that historically we don't really have much evidence that there's a force that can confront capital as well as the working class. And the history of working-class organizations, whether it be unions or large-scale labor parties, and political parties, have been able to channel this sort of power that workers have under capitalism.
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