00:00 Phil Ward: The issue to look at is: why, at the same time, do you have things like the Kyoto Protocol, which was an attempt to deal with carbon dioxide emissions, and, you know, significant renewable energy programmes in certain countries — of which Germany in many ways is the most interesting — and at the same time you have Arctic oil drilling,
00:30 fracking, the attempted exploitation of methane clathrates? This is something that Japan is very interested in. Methane clathrates are unstable compounds of methane and water that are actually solid when they're brought up from underneath the ocean. They're on the ocean floor, and if they're disturbed there's a
01:00 possibility that they will, you know, kind of create a sort of methane burst that will accelerate global warming immensely. But this is something that Japan wants to exploit. Or the Athabasca tar sands in Canada. So we've got this contradiction between various attempts to control climate change or control carbon emissions, and also
01:32 kind of extreme fossil [extraction] at the extreme end of it. And Amy sort of said — well, you know, quite rightly said — that this is about the issue of capital accumulation, the constant drive of the capitalist system for growth and profit. And you can take it down to another level, if you like: you can take it down to the level of, perhaps look at it from the point of view of, the contradiction between the long-term existential threat to the system
02:03 of climate change — and I think there is an existential threat to the system, because, as Alan pointed out, there's a threat to humanity, and the system cannot actually exist without humanity, right? I mean, there will be small numbers of people after the major climate catastrophe, but I don't think there'll be large numbers, and most of them will be living in the northern climes, you know, the tundra of — well, there won't be tundra, it won't be tundra then, obviously — but they'll be living in northern Canada and Siberia, right? That's the long-term
02:35 prognosis if the capitalist system continues to exist. Yeah. So there's the long-term existential threat, which is perhaps an issue for governments — but then governments face this problem of needing to be re-elected and so forth, right. And then the immediate existential threat to individual firms, if you like, of: how can we get our profit as quickly and as effectively as possible? And
03:07 that is a contradiction that I think they're unable to resolve. You also get contradictions between different types of firms as well. I mean, I don't think you should ignore the fact that, at least there was a time — maybe they've resolved it by [a] certain kind of financial jiggery-pokery — but there was a time when the insurance industry, which is not a small industry, was very concerned about climate change, because of what they were going to have to pay out for floods and storms and
03:38 so forth. You know, so you could say, well, maybe the insurance industry is possibly, you know, a little bit unhappy about it, as opposed to the oil industry or the car industry, right. And you get other kinds of contradictions as well. You can get, say for instance, a retailer, in terms of their energy use, right. This is something that I thought about several years ago walking down the high street in Sheffield, right. So they will have to balance, for instance, the
04:08 footfall — or whatever you call it — the increase in footfall that you get from having your doors wide open in midwinter and a hot[-air] curtain coming down the front, right, and actually having doors that open when people need to use them, right, and not allowing all that heat to escape. There are other contradictions too. I've been involved in a couple. I did research at Sheffield
04:39 University on developing a new material and processing method for lighter, more wear-resistant pistons for car engines. Now, these pistons — we didn't get as far as to actually getting them in an engine, but we did make them, and I've got one, actually, [at] the place I work. I work in a school now, [and] we show it to the school kids, we say that costs a quarter of a million pounds, right,
05:10 and they're sort of impressed by this, right. And this might have doubled the cost of the pistons, from say four pounds to eight pounds, right, so you're adding 16 pounds to the cost of an engine, right. That was not acceptable for the piston manufacturer; it might have been acceptable — [no,] it wouldn't have been acceptable for the engine manufacturer either. So, the people who say that capitalism has, you know, has all these efficiencies in it, you can develop technologies and they will be adopted as
05:41 soon as possible: it's crap. It depends on all kinds of interactions between different companies and how they operate. I had another one as well, which was electric motors. I've just been reading this — I found this amongst my stuff, I'm moving house soon — *Scientific American* from September 1990, right, "How to save energy in the global warming world", right. Okay, I read it in 1990 as well, actually, and I'd remembered something, because I referenced it when I worked
06:12 a few years later on making electric motors. This says that electric motors — I can't remember the figures, something enormous, right — electric motors in the United States take up something like — I've got it here actually, I'll find it later, I'll find it later while other people are talking. Anyhow. So we were developing a way of making more efficient electric motors. There was a problem actually, because they're replacing copper with alumin— aluminium
06:44 with copper, right. And copper is more environmentally destructive, probably, in its extraction than aluminium, right, except in energy terms, right — but in terms of the landscape copper is incredibly destructive, right. But there was no interest. The company that was paying for this work to be done weren't really interested in it. Why not? It doesn't help them to sell a more efficient electric motor if no one else is. And this is where this document says, right — the more
07:15 efficient and more expensive — but this document says that a big electric motor in industry uses 10 times its value of electricity in one year, right. So if you halve the losses on that motor, it's a massive saving. But the capitalist system won't introduce this kind of stuff, yeah, because it's this thing about how much you're going to outlay, right, to introduce some kind of energy efficiency, right,
07:45 when you're not benefiting from that energy efficiency. The same applies in housing. Housing: if you've got a private landlord, right, you're not going to benefit from putting double glazing in. If you're a councillor, you know, your council — you're not going to benefit from energy efficiency in the council housing stock either, because your tenants are paying the bills, right. So there are all kinds of problems with introducing energy efficiency and carbon dioxide saving.
08:16 I'll just mention one more thing to do with energy efficiency. This is discussed at — how much longer have I got? A minute? — this is discussed at length in an interesting document from the Corner House, right. They published three articles, three big theoretical documents, on energy and climate change recently, and in the second one they talk about the Jevons paradox. Do people know about Jevons paradox? Right. So you introduce energy efficiency —
08:49 did you want to say something about it? No? But you're assuming everybody — you introduce an energy efficiency, people save money, they spend the money on something else, right. That is something that's beneficial to the capitalist system, you know. So where that can be done, you know, it has certain benefits. There's all the problems about contradictions between sectors that I mentioned, right, but in the global scheme of things capitalism has got more efficient in the
09:20 way it uses energy, right. Okay, what's the result of that? More extraction of resources from the earth, more people, if you like, with more stuff, more planned obsolescence, more people using things as individuals when they would have used them collectively, right. This comes back to the thing that Natalie Bennett was talking about at the end. I think her speech was really interesting; I had an argument with her at the end, which I will recount if you're interested — it's about
09:52 ecological footprint, yeah. But the thing about, you know, a living income for everyone and a shorter working week, I think it's absolutely spot on. I think that what we have got to do on a world scale, right, is use resources for their use value rather than their exchange value, as Alan mentioned as well. Thank you.
## Corrections
- "the **coyote** protocol" → the **Kyoto** Protocol. - "**methyl** clathrates" (twice) → "**methane** clathrates". He defines them in the next breath as "unstable compounds of methane and water", which is what settles it; "methyl clathrate" is not a compound. - "the **jeevan's** paradox do people know about **jean's** paradox" → the **Jevons** paradox — the proposition the last third of the contribution turns on, and unfindable as the captions spell it. - "energy efficiency in the **cancer** housing stock" → "the **council** housing stock". - "if you **half** the losses on that motor" → "if you **halve** the losses". - "the tundra of well there won't be **time** it won't be tundra then obviously" → "there won't be **tundra**" — he corrects himself mid-phrase. - "a **hot curtain** coming down the front" → "a **hot[-air] curtain**", the warm-air curtain over an open shop door. - "they're replacing **copper with aluminium with copper**" → he is replacing **aluminium with copper**, and stumbles; the direction is fixed by what follows, that copper is the more destructive to extract but the better conductor. - "the company that **respond** that was paying for this work **to dartmouth** to be done" → the stray words are caption noise and are dropped; "the company that was paying for this work to be done". - "an interesting document from the **corner house**" → **The Corner House**, the research group; correct in the captions, capitalised here. - "**natalie** uh **bennett**" and "as **alan** pointed out" / "as **alan** mentioned" → Natalie Bennett and Alan Thornett, both of whom spoke earlier; "**amy**" is Amy Gilligan, whose talk is also in this collection. - "*scientific american* from september 1990 ... **how to save energy in the global warming world**" → kept as spoken. He is quoting a magazine he has just found while packing, and the figure he promises to look up is never given.