June 18, 2024

• WHO report points to massive, organized corporate opposition to research on non-communicable diseases caused by fossil fuels, alcohol, and fast-food companies such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular issues.
• Corporations have indicated their full support for the far right over even soft-left policies in France, Italy, USA, and Canada. The claims of sensible economic policy as a reason to support the centre right have evaporated when they are faced with the choice between unfunded tax cuts of the far right and fiscally balanced spending on the left.

• Investors are unable to figure out where to seek profits as they all loudly proclaim their support for stability in government-backed green investments, saying that carbon markets help shift investment. They then decry the trade policies that make those investments possible, undermine tax proposals that would fund those investments, and undermine the parties that would establish an orderly transition to sustainable economies.

  • Capital-friendly Green New Deal type programs will be cut because of the decimation of the Green Party in the EU elections.
  • Far-right parties oppose any and all energy transition programs, causing uncertainty for capital investment from finance.
  • Taxes on high-profit resource companies are opposed by broad coalitions of capital, which fund political campaigns.
• Companies are calling for stable public investment in mid-stream processing, but support politicians and policies that make such coordinated industrial development impossible.

Artificial Intelligence (TM) has replaced "Green" as an exciting field for investors. Of course, supporting the hugely energy-intensive AI infrastructure companies has increased energy demand resulting in the need to turn coal generation back on.

When we talk about the sociopathic nature of capitalism, this is what we mean. Liberal attempts at market manipulation cannot keep (finance) capital focused long enough for it to have any appreciable impact. The result is massive amounts of wasted money, which is thrown at private markets as profit subsidies that produce no outcome.

Even the threat that Canada's fossil fuel companies sitting on a huge pile of stranded assets does not deter our banks from investing to grow that pile—because the timeline for capital to be concerned is more than five years. Those stranded assets are a problem for someone else in the future. It is like buying a house that is on fire because the housing market is driving growth on the bet you can sell it before the fire erodes the value enough to affect the price.

Clearly, the left does not support the above list of profit give-aways as the solution to our species-level problems. But the contradiction that arises between the people that are presented as the pleasant, human face of capital, and the way in which capitalism actually functions as a system, must be exposed when we talk about real alternatives.

The Left has real solutions to the problems we face, solutions rooted in a clear-eyed understanding of capitalism and the limits of liberal reform. It is a program that can respond to the constant ruptures in social order by different groups and the local weather crises caused by climate change.

But in the end, we can only advance those policies if they are popular. The left in France seems to be on the cusp of doing this. Our politics must unite public investment in infrastructure and health, fair taxation, and redistributive social reforms as an alternative to right-wing politics. We must abandon profit subsidies that disadvantage working people and farmers. These must be our goals.

Even as we lose the current round of elections, in which the rightward shift is driven by the retrenchment of social gains and the inevitable alignment of capital with far-right nationalism, we must build our base and double down on science-based economic policies in preparation for – hopefully – an eventual victory. To give up in the face of this swing of the pendulum is to surrender our future to the worst tendencies of history, and to concede, however tacitly, that we have already lost.

Even in opposition, we can still stop the worst from happening through broad popular opposition—if we organize it.

• Worth a look for research-minded individuals working with companies.
• StatCan list of companies and their relationship with other companies.
• Limited, but useful.