https://socialistaction.org/2016/11/24/nationalize-the-energy-industry/
Nationalize the energy industry!
/ 24 hours ago
these-protection-plans-show-that-once-new-yorkers-start-taking-a-problem-seriously-they-can-come-up-with-some-pretty-creative-solutions-to-help-stop-it-lets-hope-we-are-doing-enoughBy
BRUCE LESNICK
On Nov. 18, the Obama administration banned oil and gas drilling in the
Arctic and Atlantic oceans for the next five years, while allowing
drilling projects to go forward in the Cook Inlet (southwest of
Anchorage, Alaska) and in the Gulf of Mexico. The media have noted the
strong possibility that when Donald Trump assumes office, his
administration would try to rewrite this blueprint in order to ramp up
off-shore oil drilling even more.
The environmental movement points out that if the worst effects of
climate change are to be avoided, the world’s remaining oil and gas
deposits must remain in the ground. Yet the U.S. government, under
Republican and Democratic administrations alike, has ignored these
warnings and continues to feed the oil companies’ hunger for profits. In
this article, Bruce Lesnick outlines why and how these companies should
be taken out of the hands of the billionaire tycoons and nationalized to
be run by working people.
We know that human activities are adversely affecting Earth’s climate.
Scientists began to draw our attention to the link between fossil fuels,
greenhouse gases, and climate in the 1980s. Since then, the evidence for
anthropogenic climate change has become overwhelming. All that’s left to
debate is what to do about it.
Under the current setup, energy conglomerates that owe their fortunes to
fossil fuels have every incentive to dismiss global warming and to cast
aspersions on climate change research. The top five oil companies (BP,
Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and Shell) reported combined
profits of $93 billion for 2013. That’s more than the U.S. budget that
year for Education ($71.9 billion) or Housing ($46.3 billion.) It’s more
than 10 times the federal budget for environmental protection ($8.9
billion). The more coal, oil, and natural gas that get burned, the more
the climate is thrown out of whack, and the more these companies are
rewarded financially.
If we’re serious about addressing climate change, nationalization of the
energy industry must become a central organizing demand. Nationalizing
the big energy companies would make all the difference to the fight to
curb greenhouse gas emissions. Right from the start, it would eliminate
profit from the energy calculus and remove a large pool of money that’s
used to manipulate government policy. It would make it possible to
embark on a plan for a sustainable energy future, which would focus on
the needs of the population and the planet as a whole, rather than on
the reckless aggrandizement of a few.
But the issue of nationalization does raise many important questions: Is
it moral? Is it legal? How would it work? Is it practical? Should the
owners of nationalized industries be compensated?
Whose morality?
Let’s first examine the question of morality. Do “we, the people” have
any moral right to take a key national industry out of private hands and
convert it to public ownership? One way to approach this is to consider
the balance sheet: what does the population “owe” to the industry, and
what does the industry “owe” to us?
To begin with, the oil, gas, coal and nuclear companies receive tens of
billions of dollars every year in government subsidies. In other words,
a healthy portion of the profits these companies report year after year
come directly out of our pockets. In the case of nuclear, it’s doubtful
that the industry would break even without massive public subsidies and
insurance guarantees.
In addition, publicly supported academic research has laid the
foundation for a great deal of the technology and innovation that allows
the energy industry (and others) to turn a profit.
Then there are the so-called external costs of energy production. These
are the depletion of limited resources, destruction of the environment,
and poisoning of communities that are all built in to the current
industry model. These costs are “external” in the sense that energy
companies don’t pay them; there are no entries for these items in their
books. Instead, these costs are born by the public. A 2010 study by the
National Resource Council put these costs at $120 billion for the year
2005 alone. This is more than the total combined, record-level profits
of Exxon, Shell, Marathon Oil ,and Chevron in that year.
If all of this weren’t enough, we can add to the social debt of the
energy industry the fact that for generations they have been blithely
churning out greenhouse gases that scientists tell us are threatening
the very survival of humanity.
So the energy companies owe a huge debt to society. What about the other
side of the moral ledger? Weighing in favor of the right of the energy
monopolies to continue business as usual is a body of corporate law and
historical precedent which, taken together, assert that production for
private profit represents the height of nobility. This is manifest in
U.S. foreign and domestic policy, which operates on the principle that
the pursuit of corporate profits is more central to “freedom” and
“democracy” than free speech, human rights and other lesser notions.
So the moral contest comes down to this: how does the claim of the
energy tycoons to pursue profits through private ownership and control
of our energy infrastructure stack up against the right of the majority
to defend ourselves from the damage, theft, abuse and destruction that
have been wrought by the energy corporations for generations? The
question answers itself. Defenders of the status quo would have us
assign monumental weight to corporate “rights”. But only in a moral
universe that values the accumulation of wealth above community
wellbeing can corporate law and historical tradition compare with the
right of the population as a whole to take action to prevent our own
extinction. It’s a question of whether to prioritize human needs or profits.
The matter of legality
Would nationalizing the energy industry be legal? Given the strong moral
case for nationalization, this question is less pressing than it might
appear. One could get lost in the thickets of the constitution and
federal and state law regarding corporations and private property, but
we ought to recognize some basic truths:
What’s legal and what’s just are not necessarily the same thing. Many
things we know to be unjust were once legal: slavery and Jim Crow
segregation, for example. Many things we know to be just were once
illegal: the right of women to vote, the right of workers to form
unions, etc. Moreover, laws are not applied equally across the board.
When it comes to interpreting and enforcing the law, the rich and
powerful are treated quite differently than the rest of us.
The law is not absolute, but is interpreted to fit the times. Just a few
years ago, same-sex marriage was illegal in most states. Today,
long-standing laws forbidding same-sex marriage have been struck down
left and right. Woman’s right to abortion was proclaimed by a
conservative Supreme Court during the Republican administration of
Richard Nixon. What tipped the balance was a massive movement in the streets
Even where the law appears to be clear-cut, “one has a moral
responsibility to disobey unjust laws,” as Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote
in his 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail. With the moral ledger for
nationalizing the energy industry pointing so squarely to the need to
place the rights of people and the planet ahead of the desire by a few
for private profit, any law that might be used to block nationalization
of the industry must be unjust.
What would it look like?
Suppose a majority of Americans were convinced of the need to
nationalize the energy monopolies as a step toward forestalling climate
calamity. How would it work, exactly?
What would not be helpful would be to create a new government
bureaucracy, run from the top down by politicians whose campaigns are
funded by the usual corporate behemoths. To do this right, we need a new
national energy sector that is run completely democratically:
•Workers in the industry should elect their own supervisors and have
final say over safety and working conditions.
•Policy, priorities and directions for the new energy sector should be
set by a national board comprised of delegates from regional energy
committees as well as elected representatives of the workers within the
energy industry, workers in other industries affected by energy policy,
scientists and engineers.
•All energy policy representatives should be elected and subject to
immediate recall. For compensation, they should receive no more than the
average pay of those they were elected to represent.
•Workers whose jobs are lost due to new priorities and directions in
energy policy should be guaranteed retraining, and full union wages for
as long as they remain unemployed.
A concise way to summarize the above principles in a slogan would be:
Nationalize the energy industry under workers’ control!
Can it be done?
We know the climate is in trouble, and nationalizing the energy
conglomerates seems like a fine idea, but is it practical?
So often, we confuse what is practical with what is easy. It would be
easy to continue to prostrate ourselves before corporate politicians and
the for-profit energy companies. We could continue to plead for reason
at the next international Conference of Parties (COP), but the results
are likely to be as dismal as was the case with COP1 through COP22. Time
is short. The movement needs a new demand and a clearer focus.
It’s popular to talk about the need for “getting money out of politics”.
But no policy could be more marinated in wealth than allowing an entire
sector of the economy—particularly one as crucial as energy—to be
steered by the need to maximize profits for a handful of private owners.
Since burning fossil fuels has proven highly profitable for the energy
corporations, we will not be able to stop global warming unless we break
the link that subordinates the needs of the many for a rational energy
policy to the desire of a few to maximize their profits. In this sense,
nationalization of the energy industry is as practical as it gets
because without taking this step, without changing the rules of the
game, we simply won’t be able to solve the climate crisis.
What would it cost?
After examining the moral balance sheet and adding up the costs, it
would be hard to make the case that the energy magnates are owed a
single penny. Quite the reverse. Taking into account generations of
depletion, destruction, pollution, devastation, state subsidies and
highway robbery, the oil barons have a monumental and growing debt to
society. On moral and rational grounds, these companies are owed nothing
in compensation for nationalization.
There is justice in this position, but we need not hold it up as an
unbreakable principle. If, by some miracle, a modest offer of
compensation would induce the energy profiteers to give up the fight,
abandon their claims and cooperate in transforming the industry to
public ownership under workers’ control, then such a deal might be worth
considering. But we shouldn’t hold or breath. The starting point must be
that the right of the majority to a healthy planet trumps any corporate
charter and any putative claim for compensation.
If humanity is to win the climate fight, we need to understand what it
will take and be more focused in our demands. We need to be fully
cognizant of who our friends and enemies are. Only then can we build a
movement powerful enough to defend the rights and needs of the majority.
By calling for nationalization of the energy industry under workers
control, we strengthen the climate change movement in multiple ways: by
identifying the key obstacles in our path; by embracing our natural
allies and unmasking our adversaries; by providing a strategy around
which a fighting movement can coalesce; and by focusing our collective
strength in such a way as to strike a real blow at the very heart of the
problem.
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November 24, 2016 in Labor, Environment, Marxist Politics and
Philosophy. Tags: fracking, oil, energy, climate
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