photo from http://anorakheaven.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/raining-and-pouring-climate-change-in-uk.html
For a moment he lost himself in the old, familiar dream. He imagined
that he was master of the sky, that the world lay spread out beneath him,
inviting him to travel where he willed. It was not the world of his own time
that he saw, but the lost world of the dawn--a rich and living panorama of
hills and lakes and forests. He felt bitter envy of his unknown ancestors, who
had flown with such freedom over all the earth, and who had let its beauty die.
Arthur C. Clarke,
The City and the Stars
CAPITALISM
STANDS as a death sentinel over planetary life.
Recent
reports from institutions such as the World Bank detail how, as a result of human activity, we are on
track for a four-degree Celsius increase in average global temperatures. Should
this come to pass, the Earth would be hotter than at any time in the last 30
million years; an absolutely devastating prognosis that will wipe out countless
species, as ecosystems destabilize and climate becomes a vortex of ever-more
erratic and wild weather events.
Despite
this, however, Americans not long ago suffered through an election campaign in
which climate change quite literally wasn't mentioned--at least until the final
weeks, when a hurricane forced the presidential candidates to acknowledge it.
And
even as the World Bank published its report--with the conclusion that avoiding
a 4-degree temperature increase was "vital for the health and welfare of
communities around the world"--bank officials were nevertheless still
handing out loans to construct more than two dozen coal-fired power plants, to the tune of $5 billion.
Perversely,
an entirely manufactured crisis, the so-called "fiscal
cliff," has
dominated political discourse since the election, notwithstanding the fact that
humanity is hurtling toward a very real "carbon cliff." Carbon
emissions are at record highs and set to rise further in a world where 1,200
new coal-burning power stations are under construction, and oil and gas
extraction are ramping up around the world. 2012 was a record year of heat in
the continental U.S., which set 362 new record high temperatures and
not a single record low.
In
direct contrast to politicians and the media, fully 80 percent of Americans
believe that climate change will be a serious problem for the United States
unless the government does something about it--with 57 percent saying the
government should do a "great deal" or "quite a bit."
Even
for the 1 in 3 Americans who say they are wary of science and distrust
scientists, 61 percent now agree that temperatures have risen over the last 100
years. Commenting on the new poll, Stanford University social psychologist
and pollster Jon Krosnick wrote, "They don't believe what the scientists say, they
believe what the thermometers say...Events are helping these people see what
scientists thought they had been seeing all along."
This
background of overwhelming public concern helps situate the upcoming national
demonstration in Washington, D.C., on February 17, against the building of the
Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from Canada to Texas. If built, the pipeline
will carry 800,000 barrels a day of highly-polluting tar sands oil, effectively
dealing a death blow to hopes of preventing rampant climate change. The
demonstration has added significance as activists attempt to draw a line in the
sand and pose the first big litmus test for the second term of Barack Obama.
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AS
CORPORATIONS hunt every square centimeter of land and sea for more fossil fuels
to sell, disfiguring the earth as they line the pockets of their shareholders,
millions of people know that the world is changing in ways that drastically
limit the beauty, diversity and stability of life on earth.
They
also know, or are coming to realize, that the people they elected to protect
and serve them spend far more of their time appeasing the corporations
responsible for the climate emergency and ecological crisis than they do
addressing their concerns. Rather than limiting the power of the corporations,
politicians of both major parties in the U.S. are greasing the wheels of
capitalist expansion. Hence the vital need to demonstrate our anger against the
destruction sanctioned by our government.
Given
that an overwhelming majority of Americans, and even most people hostile to
climate science, are in favor of action, why is it that the overwhelming
majority of politicians, who presumably are subject to the same weather as the
rest of us, can't seem to see the need? Why aren't our elected representatives
proposing serious measures to prevent it from getting worse?
How
one answers this question is not one of semantics. Rather, it is of decisive
importance because it determines how one should fight and with whom one should
forge alliances. Unfortunately, it is a question that Bill McKibben, cofounder
of 350.org and a key organizer of the February 17 demonstration, has struggled
with, but not conclusively resolved. His confusion is evidenced by the title of
an article he wrote in January: "Our Protest Must Short-Circuit the Fossil Fuel
Interests Blocking Barack Obama"--implying that Obama would do something
if he could.
In the
run-up to what is likely to be the largest U.S. demonstration to date against
the fossil fuel industry and proponents of "extreme energy"
technologies, we are at a potential turning point in the movement for
ecological justice and environmental sanity. The stultifying lull of the
election campaign, during which many Big Green groups set aside their disappointment with
Obama aside and stayed quiet about his inadequacies, is at least temporarily gone, with a large and varied
coalition of groups helping to promote the February 17 demonstration.
The
momentum generated from this demonstration could serve as the launching pad for
a sustained campaign that begins to stitch together the myriad forces fighting
locally around the country, transforming previously isolated or single-issue
initiatives and groups into a broad united front for climate justice that draws
in other forces, such as unions.
Nevertheless,
a number of activists and organizations will go to Washington hoping to
persuade someone they see as a potential ally in this fight against the fossil
fuel corporations--to persuade President Obama to go beyond the stirring words
in his inaugural address and act on climate change.
This
is the position of Big Green groups like the Sierra Club. Even as it pledged
for the first time to take part in civil disobedience, its executive director,
Michael Brune,declared that the new strategy
was part of "a larger plan to support the president in realizing his
vision and make sure his ambition meets the scale of the challenge."
The
first thing Obama and his new Secretary of State John Kerry could do is say no
to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. That would be inordinately
easy, as Obama has the final say and doesn't require Congress' support to shut
it down. After 53 senators from both parties signed a letter urging him to
green-light the pipeline, Obama is running out of ways to further delay his
decision.
In
spite of the rhetoric of his inaugural address, the pivotal question remains:
Is Barack Obama--or any Democratic leader, for that matter--really on our side?
Is it just a question of persuading a reluctant friend, hamstrung by a
right-wing, dysfunctional Congress and stymied by powerful corporate interests,
to act by demonstrating outside his house to let him know we're there for him?
Or should we be surrounding his house, knowing full well that he won't give in
to our demands without a social movement that acts independently of his wishes and
control.
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TO
UNDERSTAND the reasons for Obama's "lack of desire" to address
climate change--a microcosm of the larger inability of global leaders and
institutions to do likewise amid two decades of increasingly futile climate
negotiations--it's necessary to go beneath the surface appearance of things; to
examine the structure and ideology of the system of capitalism.
When
their financial system was threatened by the crisis that began in 2008,
political leaders didn't sit around for 20 years arguing that they had to wait
until all the facts were in and attempting to reach consensus on a solution.
No, in a heartbeat, they threw trillions of dollars at the banks.
But
when a far larger crisis, one that threatens the basic stability of the
planetary biosphere, unfurls as a result of the same policies of reckless
growth, waste and warfare, they spend their time rubbishing scientists and
ignoring the unraveling weather outside their windows.
Therefore,
to get to the root of the issue, it becomes necessary to analyze the
intertwined workings of the whole economic system of production and exchange of
goods and services--that is, capitalism. Only by doing this can we hope to
formulate an effective strategy to combat climate change and thereby recognize
that ecological and social justice are inseparably connected to each other, via
an organized, grassroots and global challenge to the capitalist social order.
One
doesn't need to be an anti-capitalist to take part in this struggle, but one
does need to recognize that unless the pendulum of social power swings back
toward the working people in the U.S. and around the world, and that limits and
regulations are placed on the activities on corporate power, we have no hope of
saving our world.
The
point we must grasp is that this struggle is not really about technology, nor
which renewable energy models should be deployed, nor whether this or that
politician or this corporation or that CEO are more or less evil than the
others. It's not about things or people at all--it's about relationships.
It's about democracy, which is itself about social power and the relationships
it presumes.
The
power of the oceans, the power of scientific rationality, the power of the
tides and hurricane-force winds are self-evidently not enough to persuade the
capitalists to act. The only force strong enough to do that is the organized
force of the people. We must take the place of gravity to pull the pendulum of
contending class forces--wrenched rightward by 30 years of neoliberalism--back
toward our side.
Ultimately,
as a socialist, I would argue that we need to live in a world where there are
no classes with diametrically opposed interests, in perpetual conflict over
social and political power. Only in such a socially just and ecologically
sustainable world will there be any long-term hope for humanity to live in
peace with itself, other species and the planet upon which we all depend. The
stepping-stones of that revolutionary road are the acts of struggle needed to
create it.
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IN
CONTRAST to his inaugural speech, Obama's first press conference after
re-election gave a more accurate insight into the priorities of his second
term. Unlike four out of five Americans who want the government to do something
to address climate change, Obama made it clear that this wouldn't be
a priority for his administration:
Understandably,
I think the American people right now have been so focused and will continue to
be focused on our economy and jobs and growth that, you know, if the message is
somehow we're going to ignore jobs and growth simply to address climate change,
I don't think anybody's going to go for that. I won't go for that.
With
two mentions of the need for "growth" in a single sentence, Obama
faithfully echoed the declaration of the Earth Summit, Rio+20, held in June
2012, where the representatives of 190 countries, while dismally avoiding any
commitment to new targets or limits on greenhouse gas emissions, did commit--16 times in all--to "sustained growth", a phrase taken to be
synonymous, rather than in fundamental conflict, with another term:
"sustainability".
The
obligation to promote growth underlines why the root of the climate problem is
systemic. If capitalism is not growing, it is in crisis. Growth must occur
continuously and in all sectors. If the sector in question is highly
profitable, it will grow even faster, regardless of any social considerations.
Like,
for example, the fossil-fuel sector. Oil production, rather than declining, as
is desperately needed to stop climate change, is predicted to increase from the
current 93 million barrels per day to 110 million by 2020--with some of the biggest increases worldwide occurring
in the U.S. The Holy Grail of all administrations since Richard Nixon--energy
independence--is being made possible by the policies of the Obama
administration, as the New York Times
reported in a special feature:
National
oil production, which declined steadily to 4.95 million barrels a day in 2008
from 9.6 million in 1970, has risen over the last four years to nearly 5.7
million barrels a day. The Energy Department projects that daily output could
reach nearly 7 million barrels by 2020. Some experts think it could eventually
hit 10 million barrels--which would put the United States in the same league as
Saudi Arabia.
As the
climate blogger and former Clinton
administration official Joseph Romm put it, Obama is "basically pushing a moderate Republican
agenda. It's just that there aren't any moderate Republicans left, much as we
don't have any 'below average temperature' years any more."
Again,
if we examine the roots of the issue, we find that the pathetic response of an
administration purporting to be concerned with environmental questions has much
less to do with individual personnel than it does with the dynamics of
capitalism.
In
1992, when George H.W. Bush flew to Rio for the first Earth Summit, all things
seemed possible. The "evil empire"--as Ronald Reagan liked to call
the tyrannical dictatorships of the USSR and Eastern Europe, which operated
falsely in the name of socialism--had collapsed under the weight of its own
economic, social and ecological contradictions. Politicians in the West were
euphoric. They had seen off what they perceived to be an existential threat to
their system.
In
today's world of enforced austerity, it's difficult to recapture the sense of
optimism that pervaded Western ruling class circles in the early 1990s. The
atmosphere of triumphalism was so great even Republican presidents like Bush
could make promises about protecting the environment. A few years later, when
the 1997 Kyoto Protocol was written, Western governments were still willing to
pledge that they would do the heavy lifting with regard to reducing emissions,
while developing countries would be free from such limits.
Hence,
the seeming "lack of will" at Rio+20 last year can be much better
explained by the onset of a huge structural crisis of capitalism, rather than
the "lack of vision" of individual politicians.
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INSTEAD
OF optimism about acting on climate change, the real optimism these days among
capitalists is about the profits they can make from the oil and gas bonanza.
Oil
giant and planet-wrecker par excellence BP is predicting that by 2030, the entire Western Hemisphere will be energy
independent, due to the expansion of new techniques for oil and gas
exploration, such as fracking in shale deposits, and horizontal and deep-water
drilling. Fossil fuels are expected to remain at 81 percent of the energy mix,
in an energy economy that will be 39 percent larger than today.
Naturally,
oil executives such as Scott D. Sheffield, chief executive of Texas-based
Pioneer Natural Resources--headquartered in an area of the world that received
only two inches of rain for the whole of 2011 and spent most of the year with
large parts of the state on fire--are nevertheless overjoyed:
To not
be concerned with where our oil is going to come from is probably the biggest
home run for the country in a hundred years...It sort of reminds me of the
industrial revolution in coal, which allowed us to have some of the cheapest
energy in the world and drove our economy in the late 1800s and 1900s.
Depending
on who you are, the outlook for natural gas is even rosier. The International Energy Agency
recently released a report
that asked in its title "Are We Entering a Golden Age of Gas?" The
answer was a resounding "yes" due to the North American shale gas
boom and a "strong post-crisis recovery" in demand.
The
other side to this "golden age," as the report makes clear, is that
future economic expansion based on natural gas "alone will not put the
world on a carbon emissions path consistent with an average global temperature
rise of no more than 2 degrees Celsius," but on a "trajectory
consistent with stabilizing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere at around 650 parts per million CO2 equivalent, suggesting a
long-term temperature rise of over 3.5 degrees Celsius."
But in
the insane capitalist "logic" of the 21st century, short-term
profit-taking must be maximized at all costs.
In a
little-reported phenomenon, the energy companies have figured out that they can
find oil in shale deposits previously considered marginal in the same way that
they "frack" for natural gas. With the price of oil over $80 a
barrel, it's profitable to seek oil in this way, regardless of the
environmental cost.
Hence,
not only is there a natural gas boom in the U.S., but there's also an enormous,
though much less publicized, oil boom. In fact, the oil boom from previously
untapped shale deposits is so large that its effects can be seen from space. The Bakken Field in North Dakota, all 15,000 square
miles of it, is one of the largest contiguous oil fields in the world, with
output doubling every 18 months. In Texas, production from the Eagle Field
increased 30-fold between 20010 and 2012.
The
reason that the remote and sparsely populated Bakken Field now rivals Chicago
in light pollution, making it visible to orbiting satellites, is because the
natural gas that comes up with the oil, rather than being collected and sold,
is simply set on fire, in a process called "flaring". This senseless
act of vandalism and waste is the result of the fact that companies are in such
a rush to make money from oil that they can't be bothered to develop the
infrastructure necessary to cope with associated natural gas.
As Stanford University academic Adam
Brandt, who analyzes greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, explains: "Companies are in a race with their competitors to
develop the resource, which means there is little incentive to delay production
to reduce flaring." In Texas, the natural gas flared in 2012 could have
provided electricity to 400,000 homes.
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SO
WHILE one set of capitalists is fracking for natural gas on the East
Coast--thanks to political leaders like Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York, who
appears to be ready to open up the state to fracking--in other parts of the
country, a different set of capitalists is setting fire to the exact same
gas because it's a nuisance that slows down production of the different
fossil fuel they're after.
Nothing
could exemplify the utter waste and anarchic insanity of capitalism than this
fact. One of the government regulatory bodies supposedly in charge of
overseeing the oil corporations, North Dakota's Industrial Commission, gave
their logic for refusing to take action against this senselessness: "If we
restricted oil production to reduce flaring, we would reduce the cash flow from
oil wells fivefold...As well as cutting waste, we are mandated to increase
production, which we would not be doing."
As for
the third and dirtiest arm of the triumvirate of fossil fuels, the world is
predicted to be burning 1.2 billion tons more coal per year in 2017. Coal has
actually declined in use in the U.S. due to companies switching electricity
production to cheaper natural gas, which has reduced U.S. carbon emissions.
One might
think this is a good thing. However, capitalism is a global system, so any coal
not sold here, finds a market overseas. The Chinese population is literally
choking to death on grotesque amounts of air pollution in cities such as
Beijing. And who's to blame? The U.S. government says China is building too
many coal plants--but increasing amounts of the coal destroying people's lungs
and the planet's air in Asia is coming from mines in the U.S. According to a report in ClimateWire:
Although
Chinese coal is largely sourced from domestic mines, EIA figures show that U.S.
coal shipments to China have dramatically risen in recent years, punctuated by
a 107 percent jump from 2011 to 2012. Chinese imports of U.S. coal surged from
4 million tons in 2011 to 8.3 million tons last year.
This
brings us to the international dimension--and the economic and military
competition between countries that makes it impossible for effective
international agreements on climate change and emissions reduction to be
negotiated.
If
Barack Obama really wanted to do something about reducing energy consumption in
America--and killing a lot fewer people around the world--he could start with a
massive reduction in military spending. The U.S. military is the single biggest
user of energy in the United States, with the Department of Defense responsible
for 80 percent of government energy requirements. Just the cost of the war in Iraq would have paid, from now until 2030, for all
the investment in renewable energies necessaryto stay below two degrees Celsius of warming.
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These
examples illustrate two things. First, we are in a do-or-die battle with the
economic system, because capitalism is in fundamental conflict with the
biosphere. And second, only a committed alliance of social and ecological
justice activists that is clear about the nature of the enemy and prepared to
confront the political and economic architects of the crisis stands a hope of
winning.
This
is why fighting the XL pipeline is about much more than stopping a single
pipeline or the first test of Obama's second term. It's about building a
movement for social and ecological justice and making it clear that we are
going to organize to prevent any more infrastructure being built that will
drive us over the ecological cliff.
As
energy analyst Chris Nelder has put it, we face a choice between keeping the
old fossil-fuel based infrastructure that is burning up the planet, and adding
to it at an annual cost of $1.6 trillion just to keep it running--or
transitioning, at much lower economic, let alone environmental, cost, to a new
energy paradigm. His figures and argument are worthy
of a lengthy quote:
Instead
of incremental spending on an effectively dead transportation regime, we should
be thinking about one that can survive the challenges ahead, and deliver more
economic benefits than costs. We should be setting an ambitious target, like
replacing all commercial passenger air flights with high speed rail for trips
under 1,000 miles, replacing 90 percent of our city street traffic with light
rail, and moving all long-haul freight traffic to rail. Even if the cost of all
that rail infrastructure were in the range of $3 trillion, it would be a
fantastic investment.
Against
$6 trillion (minimum) in sunk costs and $1.6 trillion per year in maintenance,
the $1.2 trillion per year estimate I offered in my article on infrastructure,
plus building the high speed rail network at a generous estimate of $1
trillion, looks very reasonable.
Put
another way: Would you rather spend another $32 trillion over the next 20 years
just to maintain our outmoded, unscalable, aged, unhealthy system, plus another
$2.8 trillion in lost productivity due to delays and gridlock, only to wind up
out of gas? Or would you rather spend $25 trillion to repair our existing
infrastructure, transition transportation to rail, transition the power grid to
renewables, upgrade the entire grid, and solve the carbon problem, to have free
fuel forever.
Of
course, whether we travel that road or not--and whether we leave behind a world
to our descendants as beautiful as the one we were born into--will depend on
our own independent, organized self-activity to wrench control away from a
ruling elite that is quite happy to continue making money from a system that
must be overturned.
