Between Barbarism and a Solar Transition

[SoCalDem]

Between Barbarism and a Solar Transition
by Jay M. Gould
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0602gould.htm

John Bellamy Foster’s brilliant review, “Monopoly Capital and the New Globalization” (Monthly Review, January 2002), demonstrates how monopoly capitalism has reached its current crisis, one in which all the contradictions of imperialist domination and the worldwide lack of effective demand are now leading toward the stark choice between a “deadly barbarism or a humane socialism.”

That choice may come far more quickly and favorably if we consider the current prospects of dealing with the enormous environmental pollution produced by capitalist enterprise over the last two hundred years, and especially over the last fifty. Long ago, during the Industrial Revolution, capitalists discovered that extremely profitable economies of scale could be realized by the exploitation of fossil fuels like coal and oil. They also learned that they need do nothing to cover the social costs of this exploitation, namely the associated environmental pollution.

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Public fears about nuclear safety seem to have influenced the review, which was undertaken by the Cabinet’s Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU). The technology has an “uncertain role,” the report says, “since concerns about radioactive waste, accidents, terrorism and proliferation may limit or preclude its use.” It also wants the cost of insuring against accidents and disposal of radioactive waste to be borne by nuclear stations rather than the government.

This makes nuclear power very expensive. It is estimated that it will cost 3.0 to 4.5 pence per kilowatt-hour by 2020, compared to 1.5 to 2.4 pence per kilowatt-hour for onshore wind power. Combined heat and power costs come in at 1.6 to 2.4 pence per kilowatt-hour. “Nowhere in the world have new nuclear power stations yet been financed within a liberalized electricity market,” the report points out.

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Over the past fifteen years, photovoltaics and wind turbines have become the most rapidly growing source of energy. All major oil companies today, with the notable exception of Mobil-Exxon, have small but strategic investments in photovoltaic manufacturing, as a hedge against the possible loss of cheap oil from the Middle East. If 1 percent of the four trillion dollar investment in nuclear energy were invested in solar technologies today, it would be possible someday to cover every roof top in the world with photovoltaic shingles, paving the way for the eventual elimination of both pollution and poverty.

While there would be plenty of profits accruing to the large companies from solarization, the great drawback for them is that ultimately solarization would provide electricity too cheap to meter. Sunlight, like the unpolluted air we would then breathe and the potable water we would then drink, would be far too abundant to be sold for a profit. It may be, then, that socialism will come as a result of a fierce struggle by all who fear dying prematurely of hunger and environmental pollution, and who will fight for the coming solar transition, as the only possible alternative to barbarism and the extinction of homo sapiens as a species in a radioactive planet.

JAY M. GOULD worked as a statistical expert in antitrust litigation, and served on the Science Advisory Board of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Carter administration. He is author of The Enemy Within: The High Cost of Living Near Nuclear Reactors (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1996) and you can learn more about his work on the web at