Page 200 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

16 AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID RITTER … 195

DR: Yes, I would agree with the view that the crisis of disembedded capi-
talism and the crisis of climate change are linked, and in multiple ways…
Now it is true that we would still have a climate problem if social democracy
had prevailed against the Washington Consensus in the 1970s and we’d
absolutely still have a climate problem had communism had prevailed in the
Cold War. There is no doubt that state communism itself was both an
environmental disaster and hardly respectful of scientific discourse (re-
member Lysenko!). However we do need the state to take a more strategic
role in society and to be willing to plan and intervene to solve the great
problem of climate change… So yes, I think being nostalgic for the social
democratic and social liberal impulse for collective problem solving is apt
and that Klein is right to point out that just as government has been at its
weakest is a moment when we need government the most… Now where I
think it’s interesting is that it’s arguable that the financial, the neoliberal
response to climate change whereby you marketise everything—you create
markets here, you create markets there, you create markets in natural forests
and the rest of it—that probably reached a high point in and around
Copenhagen. That neoliberal view of how to respond to the climate crisis
among those who are part of that world but who accept science also seems
to have been defeated and that itself is interesting, probably because it tells
us something about the contest within capitalism. One way of reading 2009
is that it was the financial sector versus the extractive sector—and the
financial sector lost. Arguably the financial sector was at the weakest it had
been for years at that point, in the wake of the global financial crisis. It is also
worth recalling, though, that real and existing ‘neoliberalism’ never really
adheres to the theory of a smaller state. It’s never really smaller government,
it’s always just re-regulation in the interests of the wealthy.
BB: The media system is one crucial arena in which competing
accounts of climate change struggle for visibility, credibility, and
legitimacy. In the experience of Greenpeace, does the proliferation of
online opportunities for communication work to the advantage of
campaigning groups? Can you mention some success cases?
DR: I can, but perhaps I should preface my remarks first by saying I abso-
lutely agree that the mainstream media does convey the ideology of con-
sumption: the way to make yourself happier is to buy things… Recently I
have been quite influenced by reading Evgeny Morozov and looking both at
continuities and disruptions in the impact of online communications and
communities. Unquestionably we have seen a step change in the ability to