THE climate crisis that the humanity faces has been addressed by bourgeoisie theorists as a non-class issue to be resolved either by restraining consumption or by internalising climate costs in prices that disfavours polluters. The presumption for such theories is that individual consumption patterns involve increasing use of energy and particularly fossil fuel and to restrict carbon emissions climate action calls for restricting consumption.

Tax on polluters and subsidizing green goods alters the price signals in the market and facilitates ecologically sustainable consumption habits. Discussions on sources of emission have been largely individual centric and inequality in income and wealth has been identified as one of the reasons of differential access to consumption and hence emission. In other words, rich consume more or rich countries consume more and the poor or the poorer countries are relatively less responsible for climate change. The global south versus north and the rich versus poor in ecological left discourse also revolves around differential access to consumption as the major plank of climate justice.

The carbon footprint accounting simply measures the carbon equivalent of emissions generated from human consumption. Neoliberal regime incorporates the consumption argument and tries to reconcile climate issues by the levers of market. Structuring incentives and strategising resources for green technology is the usual recipe of intervention to correct market failures. The other aspect of climate politics is the predominance of middle-class knowledge workers and professionals who see climate justice in the light of awareness and science and perceive the problem as a persistent denial of climate problem due to mass ignorance. Therefore, according to this view the real challenge is to make people realise how current consumption patterns lead to a planetary crisis.

What is missing in these perspectives is the realm of production and the recognition of the fact that the biggest share of emissions originates from industry and those are run not to satisfy some rich or poor human needs but to make profits. Fossil fuel, cement, steel, chemicals, fertilizers account for the largest share of carbon emissions in the world and the process of production as well as the generation of demand for those goods are primarily driven by capitalist principles which is hardly consistent with the cause of ecological sustainability.

PRODUCTION OR CONSUMPTION

Climate issue apparently seems to be a class neutral challenge to entire humanity. It affects the rich and the poor individuals and countries almost similarly although the incidence upon the poor used to be much greater. Most importantly the universality of the planetary crisis is so diffused that climate action requires a tedious process of building collective responsibility. It becomes difficult to ascertain immediate goals and necessary actions for decarbonisation as it falls upon everyone, and no one could be individually or as a group held responsible for environmental degradation. On top of that, most of the discourses of climate action refer to consumption habits and immediate actions often relate to cutting down consumption invoking notions of degrowth. Also, climate issues often appear to be elitist as it entails a trade-off between employment and sustainability.

Increasing cost of production through carbon tax, curbing use of fossil fuel and chemical fertilizers and promoting green technology immediately raises costs and reduces employment in traditional industries. Therefore, issues of environmental degradation and immediate necessary actions often appear to be against the majority working people. It is also important that restricting consumption makes no sense to those who do not even achieve a good standard of living. People who lost their real incomes and hence access to healthy food, shelter, health services and education because of commodification of essential needs in the neoliberal regime can hardly relate to the idea of reducing consumption. Instead, their fight to achieve higher consumption levels and protecting livelihood sounds more attractive and meaningful.

In fact, the absence of class in many climate movements seems to hide the crucial fact that capitalism as a system is not driven by the necessities of consumption and the crucial source of emission is production which accounts for more than half of emissions occurring in the world. The drive to produce in capitalism emerges from the appetite of profit and not from the stomach. The circuit of capital is money to commodity to more money and augmenting money is the specific feature of capital. Here production of commodity and the nature of commodity is subservient to the goal of producing surplus value.

In fact, new commodities and new demands are generated to achieve this goal. Even the capitalist who is the capital personified hardly has individual control over this systematic need of making profit rather the capitalist is also compelled by the rules of market competition which is beyond individual control. For the worker, the circuit is selling labour power as commodity to the capitalist against wages and spend the received wages to buy another set of commodities for their use. This is a non-capitalist circuit driven by production and exchange of use values. Reducing the consumption of use values hardly alters the dominant capitalist circuit in any way. True altering of consumption habits is required to organise society in a radically different way but altering the motivation of social production is a necessary condition to facilitate such changes in consumption patterns.

RELATIVE SURPLUS VALUE

A capitalist survives and grows in the market by continuously reducing unit costs of production which is largely a combination of increasing productivity and cheapening of wage goods. It also involves innovation and research that reduces costs of production. All these combined implies an increase in relative surplus value. Extracting materials without being concerned about the sustainability of resources reduces costs of extraction, material research increases the durability and multiple use of raw materials, use of chemical fertilizers increases yield at the cost of the soil, increased urbanisation requires cheap housing and demand for construction, increased number of urban houses increases demand for energy and so on. Processes those increase productivity essentially rely upon cheapening of labour and nature engaged in production. Such processes are no way inconsistent with the goals of creating profit but essentially in conflict with the goal of maintaining ecological balance. Therefore, it would be erroneous to suggest that approach to nature and environment is same for all human beings independent of their class positions. It is not the high consumption level of a rich capitalist that creates high degree of emissions rather it is the profiteering motive of the capitalist class that should be held responsible for the climate challenge.

The working people who are the majority are considered as workers because they do not decide what to produce and how to produce. In any case they are alienated from the means and processes of production and expected to follow the instructions of capital. As workers, they do not produce goods for their own consumption, but they are relevant to the capitalist system because they produce commodities for sale and finally the surplus value for the capitalists. But these are the people who are most affected by global warming or rising sea levels and erratic climate changes. It affects their livelihood more than that of the rich.

Hence the mobilisation for climate action must begin with people who are the immediate victims of climate change, who live and work in polluted atmosphere very different from that encountered by their office bosses. It should begin with a move to de-commodifying basic needs which would enhance the possibility of de-commodifying labour power as well. The issue that should be brought to the centre stage of climate movement is not what we are consuming but a majoritarian control over the decision regarding what and how to produce.