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has the capacity to make an astounding 94 million vehicles each year.
That’s about 34 million too many based on current sales.”
Business groups tell us that the profit motive and markets allocate
resources rationally and efficiently. But in practice, it’s so irrational and
inefficient that the idle manufacturing capacity in the car industry alone
could build Brown’s 1.5 million wind turbines.
It is not just with the car industry that the “efficient markets
hypothesis” falls flat. On an economy-wide scale, Foster and McChesney
present data showing idle manufacturing capacity across the US rose from
15% in 1970 to 22% in 2010. That’s an immense store of potential jobs
and climate solutions that is idle because its private owners haven’t
worked out a way to profit from using it.
In his book Plan B 4.0: Mobilising the Planet to Save Civilisation,
Brown came up with a “Plan B Budget”, which added up the costs of
restoring the Earth’s ecosystems. His budget included social goals, such as
universal education and health care, and natural restoration projects, such
as tree planting, soil renewal and water security.
Brown said this budget to “restore the Earth” required $187 billion a
year: equal to just one eighth of global military spending. It’s questionable
that Brown’s budget includes all the right goals or enough goals. But even
if he has underestimated the cost by 200%, the world’s military budget
could finance the job several times over.
Then consider the $32 trillion the Tax Justice Network estimates the
tax-dodging super-rich could have hidden in offshore tax havens. That’s
equal to almost half of global GDP. Imagine what could be achieved if that
ill-gotten wealth was not locked up by banks and other financial parasites.
Last year, environmental consultants Ecofys released a report that
said the world could switch to 100% renewable energy in 40 years. It said
the task would cost about 3% of world GDP a year, with the money spent
on renewables, energy infrastructure and energy efficiency.
The report also said that this big upfront clean energy investment
would pay big social dividends, lowering energy costs by about $5.7
trillion a year by 2050. Along with the climate benefits, spending big on a