[repost from Dkos a while back... was thinking about writing something tonight, but have too much on my mind. Thought maybe I'd repost this piece that got little attention over there if anyone is interested in discussing.]

If, like me, you are a human being possessed of self-consciousness and reason, living on this pale blue dot, you should not just be frightened by climate change, because you will be petrified by it. At just a 6 degree rise in temperature [predicted by 2100 at current models — which get revised downward everyday], the disruption to oceanic phytoplankton could render our atmosphere unbreathable. We’re not just talking, storms, disease, sea level rise, massive food and water disruptions — we’re talking breathing.

The ‘serious people’ have plenty of solutions — from reducing emissions, taxing fossil fuels, increasing efficiency and transitioning to a ‘green economy’ on a macro level to reducing carbon footprints on a micro level. It is said that we need a ‘World War II mobilization’ to combat climate change — and that is by the most ardent of the ‘serious people’. What this approach fails to comprehend is that climate change cannot be fundamentally altered when the structure of the world economy itself is the cause. We can’t tinker at the margins and expect any appreciable positive change while we still base our entire economic order on manufactured scarcity.

One can argue whether or not the notion of scarcity is at the heart of all historical economic orders, but it is inarguable that it is the central concept of capitalism. From Smith to Ricardo to Marx to Keynes, the fundamental promise of capitalism is, if not the elimination, at least the efficient management of scarcity. Organizing a society based on exchanging labor for the ability to obtain perceived scarce goods not only created a labor pool that had the illusion of being invested in the selling of their own labor, but also immediately created a consumer base for the result of that labor. And the scarce goods were food, shelter, clothes — maybe some medicine and education thrown in.

As this system has developed over several centuries, the actual scarcity of the most important goods has ceased to exist. There is no scarcity of food. There is no scarcity of shelter. There is no scarcity of even education or medicine. And there is also no scarcity of energy. But our economy cannot exist unless those basic resources are not just believed to be scarce, but kept, in reality, scarce. Capitalism cannot abide the material abundance that it, itself has created. It requires that its labor force works to receive them. And even if it can’t continue to employ all of them, it still requires them as a customer base to continue to exist. But wait, if no one can afford to buy your product, it ceases to exist.

This circular process of labor and consumption — and the usurious resource extraction by those who maintain that cycle to pretend we have not yet conquered scarcity — is the cause of climate change. And the full repudiation of the idea that ‘work’ is required for subsistence is the only way out.

We can no longer afford to buy your product.

We need NO JOBS. How much energy is wasted pushing papers for companies that only exist because people need to make money to eat? How much energy is spent giving services and support to all of those people with other jobs that don’t need to exist in the first place? How much energy is wasted in transporting people to those jobs. How much energy is wasted in companies that make needless goods purchased by people who work all of the above jobs for companies that only exist because people need money to eat… Capitalism is the ultimate ponzi scheme.

If we simply provided everyone with subsistence level goods, which is quite easy given our technological development, none of the ridiculous carbon consumption would need to exist.

We need to recognize that the modest and below market income most of us hope for in America in exchange for labor, if we’re lucky, is itself part of the reason for our eventual extinction at the end of this century. Our income itself is part of the support system for the economic order that is destroying the only planet we have.

What we need is a full scale recalibration of scarcity. It doesn’t exist in our capacity. It only exists in our distribution. Today, every human on the planet can be fed, housed, educated, given medical care and have access to unlimited energy. Today, we need to reshape our economy so that it doesn’t inefficiently waste all of our resources by requiring work for subsistence — or worse, poverty. We should provide for everyone universally. We have the technology. We have the food. We have the housing stock. We have the intellectual capital. We lack the will.

But Wait! “It will cost too much money”! What money? We invented money. Money is the historical vehicle of aristocracy. It exists as a more efficient medium of exchange for their power. Money has no inherent value. But technology does — it actually allows for things to exist. It allows us to conquer scarcity. Without scarcity, there is no need for money. We no longer have scarcity, so money needn’t have meaning.

If we’re serious about surviving as a species, repudiating the system that requires the waste of both human and energy resources for its own survival would seem the prudent course of action. I’m honestly mystified by the resistance.