Copenhagen cop-out
THE UN CONFERENCE on climate
change (Cop15), held in Copenhagen 7-18 December, was a fiasco. The
Independent called it "a historic failure that will live in infamy".
After years of preparation, the representatives of 193 countries
discussed and wrangled for two weeks. In the closing hours, leaders such
as Barak Obama and Wen Jinbao (and Gordon Brown) flew in, supposedly to
break the deadlock. All of them accepted the urgency of reaching
agreement. Unless global warming is limited to 2°C above pre-industrial
levels, the planet faces catastrophe. But no agreement was reached, let
alone the framework for a binding international treaty, Cop15’s original
aim. Backroom discussions between the US, China and a handful of
neo-colonial states (Brazil, India, South Africa, etc) produced an
‘accord’ – a brief memo of vague aims and even vaguer pledges.
Completely sidelined, the Cop15 assembly merely ‘noted’ the accord.
Almost immediately, China’s representative, Su Wei, announced that, as
it was not a formal UN agreement, China reserved the right to repudiate
even the accord.
This fiasco again
demonstrates the impotence of the UN on important issues. Unless the
major powers agree on a course of action – ruled out in the case of
reducing carbon emissions – the UN cannot take effective action. The
failure of the Cop15 assembly to produce an agreement was not merely the
result of manoeuvres by this or that recalcitrant government. It
reflects the inevitable clash of interests between rival national
states, each pursuing its own power, prestige and economic advantage.
They may seek to guard themselves against the worst effects of global
warming, but they want to dump the costs onto other states.
The fate of Cop15 lay in the
hands of the two dominant powers, the US and China, who are jointly
responsible for half of all world carbon emissions. Neither could broker
a deal. Neither would sign up to any regulatory regime not designed to
meet their own requirements. Their tactics made any consensus agreement
in the Cop15 assembly impossible, and resulted in the vacuous accord.
The role of the US
OBAMA POSES AS a champion of
action to curb global warming. But the US, still the only global
superpower, no longer has the authority to broker even a half-effective
deal between the major powers, let alone forge a consensus in the Cop15
assembly. This underlines the decline of US imperialism. Contrast
Obama’s failure on climate change with the position of the US at the end
of the second world war. At that time, US imperialism sponsored the
framework institutions of the post-war capitalist order: the United
Nations itself, the Bretton Woods money system based on the dollar, the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the IMF, World Bank, etc. Its
role at that time rested on the power and prestige it had accumulated
during the second world war and in the broad upswing of the world
capitalist economy.
Today, the US’s position is
very different. Its intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere has
undermined its authority. Economically, it is massively in debt to
China. On climate change, moreover, the US has a truly abysmal record.
Under Bush and before, the US refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol or
endorse other international agreements. The US has the highest per
capita emissions, twice the level of Europe and Japan, and four to ten
times the levels of China and India. Yet, the US has the technology and
the infrastructure to turn to more energy-efficient methods and
renewable sources of energy. But the majority of big business refuses to
curtail its profit-making activities in order to move in this direction.
Obama arrived in Copenhagen
with pathetically limited proposals for carbon reduction: a 17% cut over
2005 levels, the equivalent of a mere 4% reduction over 1990 levels, the
benchmark being used by most other countries. At the same time, the US
tried to bully poor countries and semi-developed industrial economies,
like India and Brazil, into accepting more stringent targets than the US
is prepared to accept itself. This tactic pushed a group of the poorer
countries (the so-called G77) into aligning itself with China. This
allowed China, in the backroom talks, to formulate an accord that placed
no binding targets on China or anyone else.
China’s role
CHINA’S DELEGATION MADE sure
that the Cop15 conference did not produce any effective agreement. In
the closed-door, backroom discussions they even objected to other
countries pledging themselves to any specific objectives. They were
determined to prevent even the preliminary formation of an international
regulatory regime that might, in the future, tie them to strict targets
and international inspection. ‘A smoking dragon in sheep’s clothing’,
the Chinese representatives sheltered behind a number of poor countries,
notably Sudan, which are hostile to any kind of UN-sponsored
arrangement.
China is developing a big
wind and solar industry. The regime is undoubtedly concerned about the
adverse effects of global warming and other environmental degradation,
particularly its potential for fomenting social unrest. For now,
however, it is not prepared to accept any slowing of its industrial
growth which is overwhelmingly based on coal-fired energy production.
Europe was more or less
sidelined at Cop15. The EU could afford to make grand, symbolic
gestures, for instance, for a 20% reduction of carbon emissions by 2020
and $15 billion a year to poor countries – if matched by the US. But
Europe’s promises were conditional on a UN agreement. Without a deal,
Europe’s promises may remain essentially symbolic.
Catastrophic failure
NICHOLAS STERN, WHO was
commissioned by Britain’s New Labour government to report on climate
change, said that "climate change is a result of the greatest market
failure the world has seen". Failure to effectively tackle the
environmental problems, he warned, would have catastrophic economic and
social consequences. Effective measures, he noted, will be very
expensive: but the longer they are postponed the more of a burden they
will be. The serious strategists of capitalism accept these conclusions,
which are based on an overwhelming body of scientific evidence. Some
sections of big business also recognise the dangers and, moreover, see
the development of green technology as a new and highly profitable field
of investment. Yet overwhelmingly, big business, driven by short-term
profitability, refuses to accept even minimal overhead costs of
countering global warming.
The Copenhagen fiasco shows
that capitalist governments are incapable of overcoming the
short-sighted resistance of big business to effective action. The
failure of capitalist leaders everywhere to effectively tackle global
warming and other environmental problems is an expression of the
underlying contradictions of capitalism. The technological potential
exists to switch to renewable forms of energy and reduce energy use
while increasing production. Under economic planning, technological
solutions could be rapidly developed for most existing problems, despite
the legacy of capitalist destruction. However, capitalist relations of
production stand in the way, above all, the private ownership of the
means of production and the fetters of the nation state.
National economies are
dominated by a handful of big banks and industrial monopolies. World
trade is dominated by giant multinational corporations. They produce and
trade for profit and regard the social costs – environmental destruction
and social degradation – as ‘off-balance-sheet’ items. As far as they
are concerned, someone else can pick up the bills.
Global warming that affects
the planet’s atmosphere, the seas, and the climates of whole continents,
cannot be dealt with within the framework of nation states. This is
particularly true given the enormous disparities of power and wealth
between different states.
Many of the 100,000
demonstrators on the streets of Copenhagen (including a large contingent
from the CWI) recognised that global warming cannot be overcome within
the framework of capitalism. ‘Our planet, not your profits’, ‘System
change, not climate change’, were prominent slogans. (See CWI website:
www.socialistworld.net)
Combating global warming
requires worldwide economic planning, which is impossible on the basis
of the market, which operates through anarchic competition. Planning
requires the public ownership of the big banks and industrial
monopolies. To ensure they are run in the interests of society as a
whole, there should be democratic planning bodies of elected
representatives of workers, consumers and the wider public.
International trade and investment would also have to be planned to
overcome the grotesque inequalities that exist. The planned use of
resources would ensure that economic growth would not be at the expense
of further environmental damage. Human society would begin to develop in
harmony with nature.
Is this just a dream? In
reality, the forces for change are already on the move. Internationally,
workers, poor farmers, the dispossessed, and sections of the middle
class are being forced into struggle against the intolerable conditions
imposed by a pathologically decaying capitalist system. Increasingly,
system change – the idea of an alternative socialist form of society –
is gaining support as the guiding aim of struggle. The alternative is
the nightmare of climate disaster and social catastrophe.