Climate Change, Growth, and the Environment

Both traditional capitalism and state socialism have failed in their capacity to deal with many critical environmental and ecological challenges. Nor is it clear that models based primarily on worker-ownership or worker self-management of competing (larger-scale) firms in market-based systems are likely to be able to resist competitive pressures to externalize costs in ways that are destructive of the environment. Similarly, both corporate capitalism and state socialism have made growth a primary goal—yet over the long haul such growth is almost certainly unsustainable on a finite planet. Nor have any of the traditional models been able to significantly alter trends leading to disastrous climate change.  
For more on the environment and its relationship to the Pluralist Commonwealth, see Chapter 13 of America Beyond Capitalism. 
Importantly, when worker-owned or self-managed larger-scale firms operate in a market-based system, groups of workers in such firms may also develop narrow interests that are not necessarily the same as those of the society as a whole. (For instance, they may be under pressure to pollute the community’s air and water rather than pay clean-up costs—especially when their firm faces stiff competition from other private or larger-scale worker-owned or self-managed companies.)
Conventional proposals to simply regulate such practices commonly ignore the institutional power and interest group pressures that develop even in the most favorable circumstances. A central issue, accordingly, is how a new model might internalize externalities, and also inherently generate and nurture a culture that is capable of sustaining new political strategies. This in turn focuses attention on more complex joint worker-community structures for larger firms now being explored in various contexts. (To be clear: smaller co-ops and smaller worker-owned firms present fewer difficulties; they are more responsive to—and dependent on—community culture, and also less powerful in community politics.) 

The Pluralist Commonwealth design attempts to deal with the institutional and systemic determinants of growth, on the one hand, and the institutional pressures that lead to the externalization of costs related to environmental destruction and climate change, on the other. It does not assume that a political program independent of the model’s inherent institutional power dynamics will necessarily correct for problems generated by the model through “after-the-fact” political regulation. It suggests that if an overall culture of community accountability can be nurtured (and larger firms more directly anchored in community related structures), more positive outcomes may be possible. 
For more on questions of scale and the pressures inherent in market based systems, see this discussion with economist David Schweickart, recorded at ICAPE in 2011:
A particularly important, but little noticed challenge has to do with the implications of economies of scale in any model. These tend to force greater competition and growth pressures that are also not easily controlled by “after-the-fact” policies since the political power of the institutions of concern is commonly much greater than that of many other elements in the system. If any one firm can achieve competitive advantage by investing in equipment that reduces costs as the number of units produced increases, enormous pressures are created for all firms to invest in such equipment—and to sell more of the goods produced. The problem is that unless a firm does this, it is likely to be destroyed by others that undertake such investment. Thus, not only must firms adopt such strategies for profit-making reasons, they must do so out of fear that other firms will eliminate them through cost-cutting. The result is a vicious circle that produces pressures to expand sales, generating unrestrained growth pressures that can be ecologically destructive. Again, the appropriate response requires strategies that integrate larger firms more directly in community-related structures and cultures.
State socialists have commonly pointed out that under traditional capitalism, corporations that must go to Wall Street for financing must grow, generating unrestrained growth pressures. On the other hand, “actually existing” socialist models have also exhibited internal pressures that not only have prioritized growth but have generated extraordinarily destructive environmental practices. The Pluralist Commonwealth model accepts the need for some forms of larger enterprise that are public, and therefore not subject to Wall Street growth pressures. However, it asserts the critical importance of rebuilding cultures of community accountability and ecological sustainability from the bottom up as ultimately the only way to nurture a larger politics and culture that constrains larger-scale and higher-level enterprise and statist functions in all systems—even those not driven by profit-maximizing pressures.
For a discussion of the relationship between the Pluralist Commonwealth, traditional state socialist theory, and the environment, see this 2013 Left Forum  discussion  between Alperovitz and eco-socialist Richard Smith. 
For these, and related questions, see the Conclusion and Afterword of What Then Must We Do?
A related question has to do with the political economy of inequality under different ownership forms. There is no inherent reason, for instance, that competing worker-owned or worker-self-managed larger-scale firms in a market-based system will generate dynamic processes leading to equality. Workers who “own” or self-manage the garbage companies are clearly on a different footing, for instance, than specific groups of workers who “own” or self-manage the oil industry. Nor, again, is it enough to simply assume that “after-the-fact” policies and politics will inevitably work to counter developments inherent in the economic and institutional power relationships of such models. Again, a larger systemic framework anchored in community-building structures at different levels is an important element in the Pluralist Commonwealth solution.

More work on climate change, growth, and the environment