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Beyond Climate Fixes: From Public Controversy to System Change
Les Levidow
For a long time, policy elites have been promoting false solutions for environmental problems.
In the 1990s they promoted genetically modified (GM) crops, supposedly to reduce agrochemical usage and so environmental harm from intensive agriculture. Yet their real priority was to create new markets for products and to privatise knowledge. Early protest demanded, “No patents on life!” A Europe-wide opposition campaign eventually blocked the GM agenda and created more opportunities for agroecological alternatives.
In response to climate change, policy elites devised a system of carbon-credit trading, which supposedly would incentivise decarbonisation technologies. In practice, this system has done little to reduce GHG emissions. Instead high-carbon polluters have been cheaply buying the right to pollute. Moreover, the system has facilitated more plunder of the global South, provoking much protest.
Both examples illustrate market-based false solutions, which entrench the power of elites who have created environmental problems. This recurrent pattern can be understood as techno-market fixes. Their false solutions often provoke public controversy and socially just, solidaristic alternatives. These have been developing grassroots solutions through commoning, where a solidaristic community defends commons and creates new ones. Such transformative mobilisations can fulfil the popular slogan, ‘System Change Not Climate Change’.
The author’s book, Beyond Climate Fixes, is summarised in this short article:-
“Technofixes or solidaristic commoning? Our climate strategy must combat the technofixes-plus-markets fraud”, The Ecologist, March 2023,
https://theecologist.org/2023/mar/20/techno-fixs-or-solidaristic-commoning
The author has more articles on the book’s webpage, https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/beyond-climate-fixes
Author's blogs
'Techno-fixs or 'solidaristic commoning'' in The Ecologist
'Glasgow’s retrofit programme: rival agendas' in ScotE3
'Labour movement agendas in conflict over decarbonisation pathways' in Greener Jobs Alliance
'Climate action through ‘transformative technologies’: how shaping a future society?' in Sustainability at The Open University
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