Life after grimy greed

>> Z Magazine’s Michael Albert proposes a green and post-capitalist future

by STEFAN CHRISTOFF

In early February, a UN study by 2,000 climate scientists from 113 countries put to rest any credible doubt that human activity is directly responsible for global warming. With environmental breakdown fast becoming a central point in national and international political debates, Concordia University will be hosting Blueprints for Change, a five-day festival including workshops, presentations and film screenings all focusing on sustainability and the environment.

Michael Albert, a featured speaker at the conference and founder of the left-wing online Z Magazine, will be offering his insights on how to build contemporary alternative economic models that will, he believes, assist in creating an environmentally sustainable world in the long run.

“Of course it is true that the type of economy one has affects how we relate to the environment,” says Albert, from the Z Magazine Media Institute in Massachusetts. “Economic activity occurs without regard for ecological costs and even beyond that, owners are highly rewarded if they can cut costs even if they do so by violating the environment. Thus we have the results we see all around us.”

Albert’s book Participatory Economics: Life After Capitalism—which has been translated into 17 languages—proposes an alternative economic system, mixing elements of classical socialism with anarchist principals. Central to the economic model is the development of decentralized economic systems that rely on participatory decision making to direct a society’s consumption and allocation of resources. Albert’s project has gained an international following with organizations advocating participatory economics (ParEcon for short) sprouting up in Turkey, Spain, Argentina, Sweden and multiple North American cities.

Social progressives are often charged with not proposing alternatives to the systems they oppose, but Albert’s theories try to answer commonly posed questions on concrete progressive ideas for social change.

“Markets account for buyer and seller, but not wider, broader implications, such as on those who breathe pollution,” Albert says. “Participatory economics eliminates all these debits and, in their place, has a mechanism for allocation that does in fact assess and account for full social costs and benefits, including environmental ones.”

Albert’s economic theories incorporate common concerns toward the environment but propose radically different economic solutions from mainstream ecological organizations like Sierra Club. “I think that those in the mainstream who are sane are simply getting worried, and rightfully so,” says Albert. “The rich and powerful can drown, boil, freeze, or starve too… so the rich and powerful start to look for ways to deal with climate and environment that will protect themselves and their assets—but that means also protecting capitalism. I think, in fact, that environmental movements have overwhelmingly, so far, focused not on the underlying economic causes but on symptoms and amelioration despite maintaining the basic causes, as in laying on various laws and using new technologies.

“Most environmental effects stem from economic choices,” says Albert. “The biggest environmental impact of inequality is that the poor and weak disproportionately suffer the ills of pollution, noise and crowding. This is not controversial; one can see it easily, everywhere.”

The Sustainability Festival will also include a presentation from federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May and launch Concordia’s Campus Sustainability Assessment, which examines sustainability practices of the university. Albert speaks on Thursday, March 1 at Concordia’s Hall Building (1455 de Maisonneuve W., Room, H-937). For more info, see http://sustainability.concordia.ca/sustainfest/ or call (514)-848-2424 ext. 5829.