Image that! You’re having work done. You’ve already got the freezing in. The dam is in place, as are a few other things. Some work has already started, and then…he/she just leaves. Someone is kind enough to take the plastic dam off your face. But what the hell do you do?
This metaphor could be a variety of other processes. A mechanic who does half the work on the car or bicycle. A contractor who takes out the old boiler but then just goes leaving the pipes sticking out. It would really suck when we get over to the subject of airline pilots.
Now make sure you hear me…
I believe climate change is an existential threat.
That’s not the issue here. I already did a longer work on this subject called “Care,” which starts back in the 1950s with the work of Charles Keeling, who, with other scientists, approached Lydon B. Johnson only to be told that the government couldn’t do that, but they could maybe look into the problem of littering.
The problem is that we are looking at only half the issue. YES, we need to divest from fossil fuels. YES, we need to move towards other sustainable activity and things like what Paul Hawken lays out in Drawdown (2017) and Kate Raworth lays out in Doughnut Economics (2017.)
What I’m saying is just stopping and switching patterns is half the job. In order to make it work, the whole job needs to be done.
What’s the number one reason some people don’t like the conversation around climate change? It’s actually in the title, well, the second word. It’s change. Things have already been changing a hell of a lot over the last 20 years. For people who grew up with a tradition of being workers with certainty, structure, dignity, and a solid future, this throws things into a tailspin for them. They’re already fed up. Things are changing all around them. They are Guy Standing’s ativistic (looking back) part of the “precariat,” and they see both massive changes plus their security and certainty diminishing. Who brought in many these new things. To them anyway, it’s the progressive side. What do they also want to do? Climate action.
Even if we switch those in oil over to working renewable energies, are they sure this be the same, and they just finish the old job on Friday and start the new one on Monday? With how things have gone, will there be enough of these jobs? You can’t really blame them for having concerns. I mean, my own movement has shared an array of videos and meme about automation from the already very much in existence Amazon Go stores, to the self driving “Cruise” taxi service, to the sorting robots that zip around warehouses.
Like Gerald Huff said, “Jobs of the future are not mass employers.” Like Viktor Shvets said,”the marginal pricing power of your job will eventually gravitate towards zero.” Like Jeff Gibbs said,”we can’t solar panels, electric cars, and windmills our way out of this.”
Automation has already been tightening the screw, as have all these other things, such as how a globalized market has worsened things. They’re right that globalization has hurt them, just in a less nefarious way that even Milton Friedman explained. It’s just free-trade taken to its natural conclusion.
So we are trying to reduce car use, bring in other degrowth ideas, end these frankly lucrative business practices in favor of more streamlined green ones, and (here in Victoria anyways) put in barriers to reduce traffic, bike lanes and car free areas.
The only thing is, the old economy is still essentially here that won’t let anyone slow down. To create any feeling of security, working people have to speed up!
Since 1971, the share to labor has gone down. As financial strategist Viktor Shvets has explained, it is eventually going to hit 0% as automation continues to shine like a rising sun into every last corner.
We can either hold tight to a sinking ship of the only income must come from jobs, the best welfare is a job and “well, they could just use their bicycles anyways” or we could get sensible and realize that the society of the 21st century requires the economy of the 21st century.
Now, when money decoupled from labor, where did it go and continue to go? Ownership of property.
Then, everyone should be a shareholder in what we have built. This isn’t communism. I’m not saying the state should seize control. It’s just the same as how every Alaskan is a shareholder of the dividend paying Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend. The money goes back into the private economy. Why would communists give money out to keep capitalism running? And, like Guy Standing asked. why are we auto-deferring to these “isms” that belong to a world long, long, dead?
We are literally working our way out of our jobs here. In doing this, we have no choice but to do exactly the things that climate activists don’t want to do. I remember trying to make it to a climate rally and to slot that into my schedule I had drive more that day and even leave early because I was worried about how traffic would be when the march started. This is goofy, guys.
What’s the carbon effect of sending someone their money share of our common abundance. Zero. What could it do? It could reduce how much they have to work in jobs and increase how much they could work in things that are reproductive or in the commons. They could share work out more, making what jobs are still around more available to more people (these can be placed atop basic incomes without the disincentive effects of current welfare).
Like I’ve liked to say instead of using the car more and more to get to each job a person could choose the one they like, the one maybe closer to home. With time freed up, other errands become less demanding of always using the car. You could go to work, stop by the grocery store, stop by to pick up the kids from school, and walk/bike back home. Let me add this **I’m not saying this is what you must do** I’m saying let’s imagine how things could be different. It’s about giving each person choice to live as they believe works best for them.
You’re literally reading a blog from a guy who works at two car dealerships. I can’t think of too many salespersons saying, “Imagine yourself in a crazy, crowded parking lot in this!”, “imagine you stuck in rush hour gridlock of a eight lane highway”,”imagine being in this nice interior while you’re stuck in a snowbank.” No, these guys love cars…the lore of cars…the newest innovations and the classic vehicles of decades before. One place I work has an entire bookshelf on the subject of Porsches. Another office has the nameplates of classics all on the same display next to a collage of photos of old Holiday Inns. Traveling all over the west coast as a kid in the early 1980s, I recognized a few of those.
If the only reasons we needed to get behind the wheel (not always a stress-free environment) were travel, sightseeing, emergencies and some work that’s unavoidable that would take a huge bite out of carbon. It would free up traffic so if you have to drive (my late loved one had mobility issues, so I counted myself in this) you wouldn’t find yourself crammed into one of those roads that bottlenecks because the old roads around it were closed for “traffic calming”.
Put simply, we can slow climate change when we allow ourselves the choice.
Unconditional basic income is about providing more choice.
It’s about saying we trust you know what to do with this. I know there’s the whole thing of “this comes from on high, therefore it could be used to worsen things” but I believe that basic income, like the natural commons of old, should be the people’s institution. We should set the parameters. We should demand the most progressive and unconditional version with no cbdcs or social credits in sight (like Vice-Chair of the Basic Income Earth Network Hilde Latour said these immediately make the system not a basic income by BIEN’s definition), We should demand it doesn’t replace certain services that money can’t do as such, and we should demand watchdogs and whatever it takes to ensure that the body, separate from government as Guy Standing wrote about in “Basic Income and How to Make it Happen” is running smoothly and unaffected by the change of government comings and goings.
Long ago, there was a tradition in English parishes called “beating the bounds”. Once a year the people, carrying long sticks, would walk the entire circumference of every natural commons. They would bang on the fence posts that marked the borders of these natural resources and ensure that no encroachments had occurred.
A basic income is a commons as it belongs to all and no one simultaneously. Like any commons, as David Bollier or Elinor Ostrom would say, requires stewardship. We are those stewards, ensuring the floor of stability is there for all.
We can do this. We can turn the heat down on our fellow passengers on this spaceship rocketing through the cosmos. Like every pilot shows, no, we won’t suddenly become idiots with it. We need to trust in each other, building trust from the ground up. We can spend less on inferior goods and more on things that matter.
Like “Degrowth, A Vocabulary for a New Era” (D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis 2015) explains in chapter after chapter a basic income is absolutely essential to change course.
We should bring everyone with us when we do.
Thanks for reading!
Tom Pogson
Check out my longer project on climate action and basic income here.
Tom the BI Vic BC Guy 