Do we need Greta?

A critical analysis of the Greta campaign and its broader context for the environment

Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels.com

“The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders. The latter course, by preserving a state of alienation, hinders the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in a total reality.”

-Paulo Freire

Greta Thunberg, an eighteen-year-old Swedish schoolgirl, has emerged as the newest face of the five-decade-long environmental movement in the Global North. Her call to fight rampant human-induced climate change has especially resonated with the younger generation as the climate crisis has raised concerns over its future survival. The result has been widespread youth mobilisation, global in scale, demanding immediate solutions from governments and businesses to resolve the crisis. Her significance to the movement is evident from the christening of the phenomenon as the “Greta Effect” (Nevett).

However, it is necessary to contextualise Greta’s activism in the broader course of development of the movement. The Greta campaign exemplifies the “co-optation of revolutionary potential” (Gramsci), forming part of a decade-long social engineering project orchestrated by the leading environmental NGOs in the Global North, funded by the world’s largest corporations[1]. The “Non-Profit Industrial Complex” (Incite) seeks the acquiescence of the striking youth to venture into a new global economic system to financialise nature. Freire’s theory of oppressive action encapsulates young Greta’s role in the movement: “The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders. The latter course, by preserving a state of alienation, hinders the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in a total reality.” The “reality” comprises the transition to environmental markets, intended to achieve the strengthening and expansion of a faltering capitalist growth economy- one fundamentally at odds with the natural world as it contributes towards ecological devastation, resource depletion, and collapsing ecosystems. The mechanisms of imperialism and militarism in the Global South undergird the capitalist system, emerging as the primary drivers of our environmental crises. Yet, activists like Greta fail to address, let alone acknowledge, these mechanisms as part of the climate discourse. Corporate-backed environmentalism, therefore, serves the purpose of preserving the capitalist system and its inherent environmental destruction.

The Non-Profit Industrial Complex

The term “Non-Profit Industrial Complex” refers to the alliance[2] between the world’s largest corporations and the leading environmental NGOs in the Global North[3], directing the transition to the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’[4] as a means of rebooting the global capitalist economy. The complex has dominated the environmental movement throughout the past decade, turning it from “radical, progressive and ecologically inspired” (Spash), to one fully embedded in the capitalist economy driven by the sole imperative of economic growth. To this end, it has engaged in a decade-long construction of a “passive revolution” (Wanner), manipulating the potentially revolutionary youth in the Global North to integrate them into environmental movements while maintaining neoliberal power structures. In doing so, resistance is “NGOised” (Roy) to disenfranchise true mass movements, enabling the vital youth energy to be captured and channeled back to “manufacture consent” (Chomsky) for market solutions financialising nature. Domination is sought through influence and persuasion rather than coercion.

The UN COP15 Summit, 2009 marked the beginning of the complex’s dominance of the environmental movement. It was at this conference, that the leading environmental NGOs united under the banner of GCCA to demand the adoption of a 2°C global temperature rise budget[5]. The campaign nullified the G77 countries’[6] demand for a 1°C budget, the latter being the originally adopted target[7] during the environmental movement’s radical phase. The target was widely accepted as a dangerous threshold not to be crossed, including by GCCA partner Greenpeace in 1997[8]. However, the readjustment was zealously pushed for by the complex as it effectively cornered climate concerns on the global stage for nearly a decade, enabling carbon emissions, and thereby, the growth economy to continue unabated. A higher budget also checked the revolutionary upsurge within the movement, buying time for the fruition of the project’s aims.

Meanwhile, the complex has ironically worked to lead the youth into “emergency mode”[9], arguing for World War II-style mobilisation of people and resources to address the climate crisis. This has formed the basis of the Paris Agreement[10] and the proposed Green New Deal in the United States[11]. The “deployment of celebrity” (Brockington) has been of great significance to their popular reception as the spectacle of global influencers like Greta is fully utilised to create a sense of urgency regarding the crisis. The resources to be mobilised, are, however, not the trillions of dollars held in assets by the neoliberal elite but public money held in pension funds. Amounting to $100 trillion, the money would serve as an impetus for creating markets dealing in environmental services[12]. In this way, “spectacle serves… to create an omnipresent affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production” (Debord). The unlocking of public capital to achieve the transition is specifically what the creation of consent is required and hastened for.

Insulation of the ‘Emitting’ Class

The most vigorously sought enabler of the consent manufacture has been an erasure of class analysis from the climate discourse. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire argues that “class conflict is a(nother) concept which upsets the oppressors, since they do not wish to consider themselves an oppressive class.” The repetitive messaging of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex serves as evidence to prove the argument, being laden with phrases like “Changing Together” and “To Change Everything, We Need Everyone”[13]. The nature of the messaging attempts to blur the class divisions fundamental to the climate crisis, seeking to purport unity amongst the corporations, states, and their citizens in the Global North in the fight against climate change. At the same time, it has been conclusively established that the world’s richest 10% are responsible for nearly half of total carbon emissions with the richest 1% accounting for 15% of them[14]. This suggests the vast disparity between contribution to emissions and its shared effects. Thus, individuals at the helm of the complex’s corporations, foundations, and hedge funds comprise the biggest emitters, forming a dominant ‘emitting’ class. However, as these individuals dictate the movement, the acknowledgment of the above fact goes absent from the works of climate celebrities backed by them.

[Oxfam International]

Moreover, as these relationships become normalised, resistance to the system is shunned allowing the manufactured activism of Greta et al to further dominate the discourse. The way this is achieved becomes apparent from the naïve assessments of eco-celebrities regarding the role of science in the climate debate. For example, Thunberg repeatedly urges her listeners to “not come with any demands” and “always listen to the science”[15] to guide their movements. Environmental scientists backed by the complex are expected to be uncritically obeyed by the youth, even as they advocate for technological solutions through “anti-ecological” (Dale) neoliberal markets[16], ignoring biophysical limits. Gone are the calls for preserving forests and biodiversity as the youth is encouraged to engage in activism while refraining from holding any opinion or demand. The glaring paradox is papered over by the complex’s strategic messaging to create the façade of popular demand for green technologies. “In their habitual consumption of the language, the language users lost(lose) in touch with history and reality while being intoxicated by a sense of political correctness”(Kang), as the passive revolution continues to insulate the emitting class.

Capitalism’s Growth Crisis

In The Communist Manifesto of 1848, Marx and Engels elaborate on the crisis tendency of capitalism and ways crises are resolved within the system: “How does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.” While the growth economy based on the indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources decimates the “mass of productive forces”, the transition to ‘green’ markets and ‘sustainable’ technologies conforms to the latter. The crisis addressed, however, is not the climate- or the ecological crisis, considered an externality within the capitalist framework. Rather, the slowdown of global economic growth presents “a grave crisis to capitalism”[17].

GDP growth (annual %): 2010-19 [World Bank]

The solution is sought in the opportunity of forging Payments for Environmental Services markets, valued at an estimated $125 trillion annually- almost twice the global GDP[18]. The major environmental agreements espoused by the Non-Profit Industrial Complex are based on the support of these markets, advertised to solve both the growth- and the climate crises working on the principle of “net-zero emissions”. PES markets allow emitters to purchase credit from offset providers who, in turn, perform activities reducing carbon emissions, believed to decouple growth from environmental damage. However, in doing so, the approach self-contradictorily “accepts neoliberal capitalism as both the problem and the solution to the ecological crisis” (Fletcher & Büscher). Also, the efficacy of technological solutions such as renewable energy use and Carbon Capture and Storage remains highly questionable. For instance, renewable energy, used to refer to electricity production alone, could only fulfill 18% of the current global energy demand[19]. The intermittent nature of sources makes it extremely challenging to even reach that target. The rest continues to be derived from fossil fuels. Add to the fact that infrastructure required to harness renewable sources and capture emitted carbon not only adds to emissions[20], but also the majority of the sequestered carbon is utilised in oil extraction[21]. Offsetting markets further secure fossil fuel emissions as the emitting class is no longer required to reduce emissions as long as they can buy offsets. Thus, nature is transformed into a commodity to be bought and sold within the market, propelling the growth economy forward. Meanwhile, the environmental crisis continues to be accelerated.

Mechanisms of Growth Economy

The primality of growth over the environment necessitates elaboration on the neoliberal growth paradigm. The traditional view of growth as a solely economic concept fails for our purpose, making it essential to approach the growth economy from a holistic political and ecological perspective, with implications for the environmental crisis.

Economic growth precipitates increasing national and corporate competition, “institutionalising and rationalising the fight over energy, materials and ecological space” (Spash). To allow for perpetual growth, new resources and markets need to be continually exploited. The growth economy further demands an idealised workforce, engaging in constant market production and consumption. It, therefore, houses the tendency to expand into regions outside the capitalist sphere. In the present context, the propagation of environmental markets in the Global South corresponds to the above pattern. Militarism’s role in the process is significant as it facilitates the growth economy by securing supply chains, resources, and markets.

As a result of growth-induced imperialism, indigenous societies with systems of social provisioning structured on “frugality and sufficiency” (Spash & Smith) are discriminated against. These societies form the most effective opposition to neoliberal technological solutions, playing a vital role in ensuring sustainability through preservation[22]. This forms the rationale behind their attempted integration into neoliberal imperial structures “dissolving their pre-existing social and ecological relationships” (Dunlap & Fairhead). Much of it is ironically achieved through conservation projects, which remain highly militarised and are responsible for the widespread persecution of indigenous communities globally[23]. Lastly, militarism’s direct contribution to the environmental crisis is made evident from the fact that the U.S. military, the largest in the world, is also the largest institutional emitter globally[24].

Taking these mechanisms into account, it becomes clear that the capitalist growth economy is wholly incompatible with sustainability. Its preservation rests on the dispossession of indigenous people in the Global South, paralleling the disenfranchisement of youth movements in the Global North.

Conclusion

Hence, the activism sought by the Non-Profit Industrial Complex not only seeks the disenfranchisement of the potentially rebellious youth, but it is also the very apparatus constructed to save the capitalist system. The spectacle of eco-celebrities like Greta is repeatedly invoked by neoliberal movements “to sustain the paradoxical idea that capitalist markets are the answer to their own ecological contradictions” (Fletcher). Consequently, environmentalism gets transformed from the defense of nature to that of a fundamentally unequal capitalist system driving its destruction. It is in this defining moment that the passive revolution attains maturity and suicidal technological solutions are finally unleashed.

Footnotes

1. Morningstar, Cory. The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg. Norderstedt Germany, Books On Demand, 2019.
2. ibid.
3. Global Call For Climate Action. “GCCA Annual Report 2017.” GCCA, 2017.
4. Schwab, Klaus. The Fourth Industrial Revolution. London, Penguin Random House, 2017.
5. ibid.
6. Vihma, Antto, et al. “Negotiating Solidarity? The G77 through the Prism of Climate Change Negotiations.” Global Change, Peace & Security, vol. 23, no. 3, Oct. 2011, pp. 315–334, 10.1080/14781158.2011.601853. Accessed 13 May 2021.
7. Hare, Bill. Fossil Fuels and Climate Protection – the Carbon Logic. Greenpeace International, 1 Oct. 1997.
8. ibid.
9. Salamon, Margaret Klein. “Leading the public into emergency mode.” A new strategy for the climate movement, The Climate Mobilization, New York, 2018.
10. “The Paris Agreement.” UNFCCC, United Nations, 2016, unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement.
11. Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria. “Green New Deal.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 25 Apr. 2019, ocasio-cortez.house.gov/gnd.
12. Saha, Deblina, et al. “Contribution of Institutional Investors.” World Bank Group, 2018.
13. La Stampa. “Naomi Klein: ‘to Change Everything, We Need Everyone.’” La Stampa, 1 July 2015, www.lastampa.it/vatican-insider/en/2015/07/01/news/naomi-klein-to-change-everything-we-need-everyone-1.35237514. Accessed 6 June 2021.
14. ‌ Gore, Tim. “Confronting Carbon Inequality.” Oxfam International, 21 Sept. 2020.
15. Rampell, Ed. “Greta Thunberg’s Quest to ‘Listen to the Science.’” The Progressive, 21 Apr. 2021, progressive.org/latest/greta-thunberg-listen-to-science-rampell-210421/. Accessed 10 June 2021.
16. Watts, Jonathan. “Johan Rockström: ‘We Need Bankers as Well as Activists… We Have 10 Years to Cut Emissions by Half.’” The Guardian, 29 May 2021, www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/29/johan-rockstrom-interview-breaking-boundaries-attenborough-biden. Accessed 29 June 2021.
17. ‌ Deutsche Welle. “Capitalism Is in Crisis.” Deutsche Welle, 17 Jan. 2017, www.dw.com/en/capitalism-is-in-crisis/av-37155604.
18. Capitals Coalition. “» the Value of Ecosystem Services from Giant Panda Reserves.” org, 12 July 2018, capitalscoalition.org/the-value-of-ecosystem-services-from-giant-panda-reserves/. Accessed 28 June 2021.
19. York, Richard. “Do Alternative Energy Sources Displace Fossil Fuels?” Nature Climate Change, vol. 2, no. 6, 18 Mar. 2012, pp. 441–443, 10.1038/nclimate1451. Accessed 11 Apr. 2021.
20. Barnard, Michael. “Best Carbon Capture Facility in World Emits 25 Times More CO2 than Sequestered.” CleanTechnica, 12 June 2019, cleantechnica.com/2019/06/12/best-carbon-capture-facility-in-world-emits-25-times-more-co2-than-sequestered/.
21. Energy Sector Planning and Analysis (ESPA), et al. *A Review of the CO2 Pipeline Infrastructure in the U.S.*S. Department of Energy, 21 Apr. 2015.
22. Webb, Jessica, et al. “Geospatial Data Brings Indigenous and Community Lands to the Forefront of Forest Management | People | Global Forest Watch Blog.” Global Forest Watch Content, 20 Apr. 2020, globalforestwatch.org/blog/people/geospatial-data-indigenous-community-land-forest-management/. Accessed 29 June 2021.
23. ibid.
24. Belcher, Oliver, et al. “The U.S. Military Is Not Sustainable.” Science, vol. 367, no. 6481, 27 Feb. 2020, pp. 989.2-990, 10.1126/science.abb1173.

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