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Global crisis hits global warming action
AS THE LAST issue of Socialism Today warned (A Green
New Deal? December/January 2008/09), the developing economic crisis is
increasingly hitting the chances of effective action on global warming.
UN and EU conferences in December 2008, that were supposed to pave the
way for agreement to a successor of the Kyoto treaty in Copenhagen in
December this year, failed to deliver any progress and in some respects
marked a step back.
This happened despite alarming new evidence from
scientists attending the UN conference in Poland about further rapid
increases in greenhouse gas emissions linked to the release of methane
in the Arctic. Methane is a much more dangerous cause of global warming
than the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, but its level in the
atmosphere remained stable for the past decade. Then in 2007 there was a
sudden surge in methane concentrations that has been traced to the
Arctic, released by the melting of the permafrost in the region,
according to Philippe Ciais of the Global Carbon Project, a scientific
network. The melting of the permafrost is in the first place caused by
global warming, due largely to CO2 emissions. Therefore, this
new development could create a self-reinforcing cycle that may lead to a
tipping point, beyond which global warming effects will become
unstoppable.
A key issue at both sets of talks was removing the
loopholes in the Kyoto and EU permit trading systems that has made them
completely ineffective, but the economic crisis had clearly put the
negotiators in no mood to compromise. The EU talks in Poznan were marked
by bad tempered bickering between the capitalist powers that descended
into farce at times. For instance, one proposal was to allow
industrialised countries to buy chunks of rainforest that they could
then offset against their own emissions. The hope behind this scheme is
that logging companies would then be prevented from clearing the
rainforests, thus preserving a valuable sink that absorbs CO2.
If this went ahead, however, there would be no way of stopping western
countries from selling land to loggers in the future if it was worth
more to them than keeping their offsetting permits. Agents of foreign
governments on the ground could also turn a blind-eye to logging in
return for a pay-off. In addition, allowing offsetting in general
removes any incentive for the industrialised countries that account for
the majority of pollution to reduce their domestic emissions.
This highly dubious offsetting scam – a continuation
of the loopholes that undermined Kyoto, another concession to business
interests – was still unacceptable to the USA and the Labour-led
government of Australia among others. They insisted on the removal of
text referring to measures to protect the rights of the indigenous
peoples whose land was to be bought out by the industrialised powers.
Even after this had been done, the negotiators could still not agree on
what was by then a highly watered-down and largely ineffective, not to
mention unjust, measure. So, it was shelved – hardly a good omen for the
international cooperation that will be needed for effective action on
climate change in Copenhagen.
Another central issue in the Poznan talks was how to
involve in a meaningful way recently industrialising countries such as
China and India. They had refused to join the Kyoto process arguing
reasonably that the build up of greenhouse gasses historically was
largely due to the main imperialist powers. They were not prepared to
pay for the actions of their former colonial masters. However, involving
China in measures to reduce global warming is now crucial since it has
recently overtaken the USA as the biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses.
Recognising the difficulty in persuading poor
countries to join in, the UN set up an Adaptation Fund after the Bali
climate meeting in 2007 to pay for measures for ‘developing’ countries
to adapt to climate change. The UN calculated that this would require
about $86 billion per year. As only $300 million had been paid in – even
though all Kyoto signatories in theory were obliged by treaty to donate
– a key task of the Poznan meeting was to find ways to step up the
funding. A modest proposal was put forward to tax emissions trading and
to put the proceeds into the Adaptation Fund. This would have yielded $7
billion, a fraction of what the UN calculated is needed. Even this was
voted down, to the outrage of India and others.
The only possible chance that India and China, in
particular, would have agreed to take part meaningfully in a successor
to Kyoto was if large amounts of money were available to them to convert
to renewable energy. This now looks highly unlikely, and will
fundamentally undermine a successor to Kyoto years before it is due to
start.
The negotiations to make the EU emissions trading
scheme, which mirrors the Kyoto process, more effective, were equally
unsuccessful. The delegates at the conference in Brussels agreed only on
the need for a 20% cut in emissions by 2020, when the consensus of
climate scientists is for a cut of 40%. More significantly, EU
governments agreed to keep the huge loopholes that have made the
emissions trading scheme environmentally worthless. On the insistence of
the ‘green’ German government, firms will continue to be able to obtain
pollution permits for free – undermining the entire logic of the
make-the-polluter-pay system – if they can show that they face
competition from outside the EU. This concession means that nearly all
industrial companies will qualify. As George Monbiot has pointed out,
these firms will be able to pass on the notional cost of the free
permits to their customers, as at present. So, the polluter is not only
not paying, but is actually being paid to pollute the planet. Brussels’
commitment to reduce emissions by 30% instead of 20%, if agreement is
reached at the forthcoming climate summit in Copenhagen, has also been
fudged.
Hopes are still high among some environmental
activists that the Obama administration will introduce effective
measures to tackle global warming. His pick of prominent climate science
champions for key jobs in the government has been called a ‘dream team’
by New Scientist magazine (3 January). For example, his chief science
advisor will be John Holdern of Harvard University, well known as an
advocate of decisive measures to reduce emissions.
However, Obama sent Senator John Kerry to represent
him at the Poznan conference. Apart from giving no commitments at all,
Kerry made a point of saying that the US would be no pushover in climate
talks and would not ratify any agreement if "big emerging economies
failed to make commitments of their own". Clearly with China in mind,
this is essentially the same point the Bush regime had always made about
climate agreements, reflecting the fact that the US ruling class will
not give any serious concessions, particularly in a downturn, to the
state it sees as its chief global rival.
The brutal logic of the economic crisis is asserting
itself with every day that passes. This is shown by the collapse in
investment in green technology after nearly all sources of finance have
disappeared. The big oil companies who all ran some largely cosmetic
alternative energy schemes are axing them with unceremonious haste,
prompting the Financial Times to comment that they "have an entirely
understandable impulse to save their own balance sheets before saving
the world". (3 December 2008) This applies equally to other firms.
Inevitably, this logic will shape the actions of the Obama
administration which will also be forced to put the balance sheets of US
corporations before the desire of any of its individual members to save
the planet.
Pete Dickenson
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