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Another
UN climate conference is scheduled for December in Copenhagen, Denmark, where negotiators expect
to hash out an agreement for the post 2012 period. However, with
nothing significant having been done up until now, it is doubtful that
the Kyoto signatories, whose ranks the U.S. has yet to join, will work
any kind of miracle to stabilize the climate.
At
each successive stage of the talks, less and less has been
accomplished, with world leaders failing to set compulsory emission
targets with clout and nations failing to reach their pathetically low
goals. Instead, the 14 Conferences of the Parties (COPs)
held thus far by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCC) have been conducted like common trade negotiations, with
the large transnationals setting up shop to
haggle for a slice of the climate-mitigation pie. At Poznan, Poland, last December, private
industry lobbyists insinuated themselves as members of government
delegations or passed as representatives of NGOs.
The
desperate situation the world now faces is entirely due to the
worthless market-based solutions the advanced nations have
adopted—phony carbon-trading and offset schemes, fake clean-development
mechanisms (CDMs), and fraudulent efforts to
reduce deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). Each of these
has been cleverly devised by the advanced nations of the North so their
industries can avoid actually reducing domestic greenhouse gas
emissions. These false strategies were intended from the onset as
stalling tactics to continue the status quo, commodify
the globe’s carbon sinks and profit from ecosystem degradation at
the expense of Southern people in particular and the health of the
planet in general.
Carbon
trading came into being because of the Clinton/Gore intervention in Kyoto in 1997, when Al Gore
successfully pushed for this climate-abatement sham. The EU Carbon
Trading Scheme (ETS) merely offers the illusion that something is being
done while granting carte blanche to polluters, who should be
punished for their crimes against nature, not rewarded. Corporations
and governments cannot be allowed to continue with this knavery, which
does not reduce greenhouse gas emissions one iota. Pull the plug on
pollution credits!
The
peddling of carbon offsets is another Kyoto mockery, which grants
over-consumers and big polluters the privilege of buying their way out
by planting trees that would supposedly absorb their carbon emissions
somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere. In reality, natural forests are
being razed and replaced with industrial tree farms while local folk
are being denied entitlement to their ancestral lands. We must oppose
this insidious practice and demand that all landed rights be restored
to those who have been victimized by it. Hands off the world’s
forests! No industrial logging or tree plantations!
“Clean” development
mechanisms
Many
of the falsely-named clean-development mechanisms (CDMs)
are nothing but attempts to dress up as clean and carbon-neutral,
filthy coal-fired power plants, dangerous nuclear reactors,
contaminating waste incinerators, and megadams
that displace tribal people and drown ecosystems. There is nothing
green about any of them, yet they are promoted so that corporations can
avoid the expense of installing non-carbon technologies.
Astonishingly,
the EU hopes that over half of all emissions reductions can be met
through these bogus projects. The big multinationals have even demanded
public funds for dirty power sources. They insisted that
energy-intensive industries receive “special treatment”, meaning relief
from their obligation to drastically reduce emissions while receiving
subsidies. This will further enable the rich North to outsource its
pollution to the poor South, which justifiably feels that it is owed a
huge ecological debt for the systematic rape and plunder of its natural
resources.
Part
of the so-called Bali Roadmap, hailed as a great step forward, included
a program for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest
degradation (REDD). This too is a bucket of greenwash.
REDD enables governments, which grant concessions to loggers to mine
timber from tropical rainforests and allows big farmers to replace them
with monocrops, to bribe them not to
clear-cut.
In
the meantime, industries elsewhere are allowed to continue polluting.
In addition, first-time logging of primary forests is then labeled as a
Sustainable Forest Management (SFM), which many big environmental NGOs
are being suckered in to endorsing. Return the forests to forest
people and the creatures that inhabit them!
The
World Bank has been facilitating this whole process by continuing to
fund the mad pursuit of the last barrel of oil while the planet is
melting down. It increased its lending to global fossil-fuel
development by 94% in 2007. Through a series of carbon funds, it has
provided the capital for harmful offsets, CDMs
and REDDS.
In
addition, the World Bank persists in imposing privatization schemes on
the global South, which is seen as nothing but a vast mine of raw
materials and source of cheap labor. Governments there,
either voluntarily or through arm twisting by the economic hit men, are
trading away their own natural resources while the mass of people are
denied a voice or any control over their fate. Resource rights
are non-negotiable!
To
gain control of the world’s hydrocarbon reserves, the U.S. has plunged the Middle East and Central Asia into a perpetual state of
warfare, with hundreds of thousands of people maimed and dead on both
sides. Wasteful military budgets have diverted trillions of dollars
that should be going toward a massive conversion of the productive
processes to enable the green manufacture of renewable wind and solar
technologies and clean mass transit.
The
pollution from the capitalist war machine contributes volumes to
greenhouse gas emissions. Between 2003 and 2007, the Iraq War alone
generated 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the combustion
of four billion gallons of transport fuels, cement production for
garrisons, and natural gas flaring and oil well fires. The occupation
of Afghanistan could be nearly as much. It’s time to dismantle the war
machine and meltdown its implements of destruction to create
clean-energy systems produced, installed and maintained by the hands of
green-collar workers.
It
is clear that the means to adapt to climate change will not come from globalized capital, which is in a serious crisis
despite rosy predictions from bourgeois economists. With a failing
economic system, the giant northern transnationals
will only intensify the corporate takeover of the planet and the
super-exploitation of Southern resources, ecosystems, and peoples as
the capitalist rulers devise ways to make the world’s masses bear the
brunt of the economic and environmental crises. The financial debacle
and worldwide recession are being raised as a justification for the
advanced nations to lower already absurdly low emissions targets.
They cannot get away with this.
The failure of Kyoto
It
is quite apparent that the Kyoto Protocol is a complete failure.
Therefore, we must not allow Kyoto 2 to in any way resemble Kyoto 1.
Pressuring world powers to do more of the same at the final round of
talks in Copenhagen this year will only spell
doom for humanity and the rest of life on Earth.
The
solutions to the climate crisis will not come from the big corporations
or from any government. There is no fixing this climate agreement as it
is currently constituted. It is not merely broken and in need of repair. It must be replaced.
We
need an international People’s Climate Protocol that puts planetary and
human needs before profits. Achieving such a program of action will
require the toilers of the world to fight to change things in their own
homelands while reaching hands across borders and uniting in one great
worldwide struggle. Ultimately, the capitalists and their governments
worldwide must be replaced by a new society in which the interests of
the workers and peasants come foremost. That is the only way to avert
global disaster.
In
the meantime, we must get millions upon millions into the streets in Copenhagen and other major cities to
demand real measures to adapt to climate change. To prevent complete
climate chaos, we must begin to draw down carbon to a safe 300-325 ppm CO2 immediately. It is essential that the world
completely wean itself off of fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas
emissions to zero.
To
accomplish that, every industrialized nation needs to launch a crash
program of renewable energy and clean mass transit, funded by the
budget they now allocate to the military and implemented through
gigantic mass mobilizations. The money and resources are already there.
Clean
technologies must be produced not only for domestic use in the advanced
nations but export as well. They should be given free to poorer
countries to raise the quality of life there and prevent the raging maldevelopment of India and China, which is contributing
hugely to planetary meltdown.
Local
actions in the U.S. have been called for Oct.
24 by 350.org, and for Nov. 30 by Rising Tide,
North
America. We encourage you to turn out in your local area and say,
“Kyoto 2 Won’t Do!” If there is nothing happening in your city, start
something. This is a global emergency! We can prevent a climate
cataclysm if we organize now to Save Mother Earth!
Earth
is dying, and capitalism is killing her. We are eco-socialists, who
believe that the ruthless system of commodity production for private
profit is what is destroying our planetary home. However, it need not
be that way because the necessities of life can be produced without
harming Mother Nature, who can heal herself if given the chance.
If
we are to survive as a species, the conversion to a zero-waste,
zero-growth, steady-state, democratically planned, green, sustainable,
socialist economy is absolutely essential. Any thinking person
concerned with the future can see the logic of it. A better world, in
which human societies exist in peace and harmony with nature, is
possible, and we encourage you to join us.
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