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We
live on a planet in peril, one that is in jeopardy because of
capitalist greed. The combustion of fossils fuels to power commodity
production is causing Earth to melt down. Yet, no measurable progress
is being made to cope with the situation since greenhouse gas emissions
continue to spew forth with no end in sight, CO2 concentrations have
spiked every year this century and temperatures are still rising.
We
are on the verge of complete climate chaos as a cascade of positive
feedbacks pushes us ever closer to dangerous tipping points while putting
all of Nature horribly out of balance. Still, the capitalist class
continues to resist with all its might the implementation of viable
solutions that will allow us to adapt to the dramatic changes that are
occurring.
The
reason for this is the almighty profit motive, which drives them to
extract ever more raw materials to produce ever more goods, many of
which have little to do with the satisfaction of genuine human needs.
This frantic production of things they’ve convinced us we all
desperately need is for what has now become a seriously oversaturated
and failing market.
Let’s
face it, capitalism has had 250 years to prove that it can produce the
necessities of life without harming the natural world and humanity, and
it has failed the test miserably.
In
regard to the climate crisis, the primary strategy of the capitalist
ruling class is to basically ignore it and to engage in desperate
attempts to wrest the remaining hydrocarbons from the bowels of Earth.
They relentlessly chase the last barrel of oil by waging bloody
resource wars under the pretext of fighting terrorism, lifting the
moratorium on offshore drilling, auctioning oil and gas leases,
continually threatening to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
to exploitation, engaging in destructive tar-sands and oil-shale
extraction—and using carbon dioxide, ironically, to coax recovery from
depleted oil reservoirs and coalbed methane
fields.
To
get at what is left of our coal reserves, they must go deeper and
deeper with deadly retreat mining, blast the tops clean off of
mountains, or strip away the land, leaving devastated ecosystems and
human lives.
To
offer the illusion that they are actually doing something to mitigate
climate change, they offer an array of non-solutions that only do
further harm either directly or indirectly because they serve as
stalling tactics that suck us deeper into the mire of environmental
devastation and climate catastrophe.
As
a class, the capitalists’ sense of self-preservation is as strong as
ever. As individual human beings living on a planet in peril, they seem
to have no basic survival instincts whatsoever as they continue to
pursue policies that are racing us, themselves included, toward certain
annihilation.
Carbon-trading schemes
Those
responsible for the climate crisis—the Carbon Barons and others of
their ilk—refuse to deal with it in any substantive way. At first,
their strategy was to deny global warming is occurring, then to say it
is not caused by human activity and to employ a host of skeptics whose job
it was to cast doubt on the evidence. Now that the science is
unassailable and the debate is over, they endlessly stall and do
essentially nothing as time runs out.
So
that business can proceed as usual, the best
the captains of industry and their subservient politicians can come up
with is a plethora of tactics that will avoid meaningful change and
allow them to fuel the economy in the manner to which it has been
accustomed. They have proposed carbon-trading and auction schemes that
are nothing but licenses to pollute, to be bought and sold on an
exchange, with brokers receiving a tidy commission in the bargain.
Incredible
as it may seem, European governments have so massively over-allocated
CO2 permits as to cause the carbon market to crash because of falling
prices. It is just another means to create more fictitious capital in a
futile attempt to solve their liquidity crisis.
To
the extent that carbon trading accomplishes anything, it results in the
commodification of Earth’s carbon-cycling
system and is just one more attempt to privatize Nature. Furthermore,
it is nothing but a phony accounting scheme that will only give a free
hand to the big corporate polluters to get away with murder. Cooking
the books will only cook the planet!
Carbon
trading has been the primary strategy of the European Union. As a
consequence, every EU nation has been forced to admit in utter disgrace
that they will not make their emission-reductions goals for the first
round of the Kyoto Protocol. With the worldwide financial crisis as an
excuse, heads of government and environment ministers are all crying
poverty and demanding that the targets be lowered so they can continue
to backslide on goals they were not even close to meeting in the first
place.
This
was the main thrust of the UN climate-change conference held in Poznan, Poland, in December 2008. They cannot be allowed to use the financial
crisis as a justification for their inaction. We must say, "Save
the Climate, not Wall Street!"
To
the extent that big-polluting Europe has reduced its greenhouse
gas emissions at all, it has done so by shipping its manufacturing to
the Southern Hemisphere, where its multi-nationals are super-exploiting
the labor and befouling the environment of poor countries while robbing
European workers of decent-paying union jobs—just as they do here.
Given all that and the gross, raging maldevelopment
of India and China, the Kyoto Protocol has
been rendered a cruel joke.
We
must denounce "the win-win scenarios" of the Carbon Barons
and the rest of the capitalist class. We cannot allow the bosses, who
have gotten rich off of our backs, to buy their way out of purgatory—a
purgatory in which we now all languish and where many are dying by the
millions amidst unspeakable suffering.
Carbon offsets
Another
of their brilliant ideas is the sale of carbon offsets designed to ease
the consciences of frequent flyers and overconsuming
Hollywood celebrities. This pay-now,
sin-later plan is reminiscent of the sale of indulgences by the
medieval church. After greasing the palms of the corrupt hierarchy,
sinners were allowed to go on transgressing while ensuring a reprieve
in the Hereafter.
These
contrivances also go under the ludicrous name of carbon-credit logging
based on the notion that old-growth forests eventually max out on the
amount of carbon they can store in their lifetimes. Studies have shown
that this is not true, and ancient forests need to be protected.
The
purchase of carbon offsets by planting trees—often genetically modified
varieties—in sterile monocultural plantations
devoid of understory is only making the
problem worse by creating what the local people in the Southern
Hemisphere call "green deserts." Natural forests, bogs,
wetlands, and grasslands—on which indigenous people must subsist—are
foolishly being destroyed for this purpose after they have conveniently
been declared degraded land. The carbon traders have been cheating on
calculations for the offsets, grossly overestimating the ability of the
trees to absorb more carbon.
Any
botanist will tell you that carbon fixation rates vary greatly within
even the same species of plant, depending upon the local microclimate,
soils, hydrology, and other factors under which it is growing. Needless
to say, a plantation in which trees are arranged uniformly in neat,
straight rows and cleared of all other competing vegetation with the
use of herbicides is not as richly biodiverse
as a real forest and can never store as much carbon as the original
ecosystem it replaced.
There
is a tremendous difference between monocrops
and a tropical rainforest with its canopy, multiple layers of understory and complex interactions among species
all the way down to the microbial level. Monocultural
tree plantations are ecologically unstable, being more vulnerable to
disease and wildfire, which can release carbon instantly back into the
atmosphere. Likewise, there is a huge difference between the impacts of
carbon from fossil fuel combustion and biological carbon in trees as it
is cycled from forest to ocean to atmosphere.
Once
credit for the offsets has been sufficiently laundered through the
system, the cheap, fast-growing eucalyptus and pine trees will be
harvested, releasing their carbon and becoming net emitters. The whole
process of land clearing releases stored carbon from the soil as well.
The
result of offsets of this sort is to transform the developing world
into a cheap carbon dump while the crisis worsens daily. They destroy
the ability of local people to live, placing
the burden for the richest nations’ contribution to global warming onto
the backs of the poorest with what is not only a biological monoculture
but a social one as well.
The
destruction of the commons further marginalizes already marginalized
peoples and robs them of their natural entitlements. It is completely
at odds with the concept of climate justice and equity.
We
must oppose these non-solutions, which advance globalization and neoliberal policies to benefit the transnationals and further their efforts to swallow
up the resources of the planet. The foundation of carbon trading and
offsets is dead wrong and a big lie. We must also stand against the
World Bank, IMF, and G8 nations that promote these wretched schemes and
stand in solidarity instead, with those who are the victims of them.
Carbon tax
Seeing
the uselessness of carbon trading and offsets, some, including NASA’s
chief climatologist James Hansen, are proposing a carbon tax to be
implemented at the wellhead, mine gate, or port of entry. This would be
the point at which the least amount of value has been added to the oil,
gas, or coal. Somewhere along the line, it would supposedly enable the
reduction of payroll taxes, and everyone would receive a dividend, the
size of which would depend upon their fossil-fuel usage.
The
rationale is that working people, the poor, disadvantaged, and
environmentally conscious would be rewarded for their frugality and
wisdom by receiving a larger dividend. Whereas, the privileged and
foolhardy would be punished for their prodigality by receiving
virtually nothing—so justice would prevail.
Unfortunately,
knowing how the wealthy cheat on their taxes by wriggling through
loopholes, once again it would be working people who pay the most. If
the rich did bite the bullet and paid the tax, workers would suffer
even further when the tax jacked up energy prices and subsequently the
cost of everything else.
Although
we must all tread more gently on the planet and reduce our ecological
footprint, working men and women should not be made to sacrifice and
pay for our employers’ crimes against Nature. By robbing us of our
health, a clean environment, and our ability to support ourselves and
our families, those crimes have been committed against us too as well
as future generations.
We’ve
been paying long enough. "Tax Corporate Polluters, Not
Consumers!" Haul the violators to prison and throw away the key!
"Clean coal" and
other myths
The
myth of clean coal has been perpetuated by the coal industry and
candidates for office by promoting carbon capture and sequestration
(CCS) techniques. Carbon capture of CO2 from coal-fired power plants
will have an enormous energy penalty, requiring even more coal to be
mined, transported, pulverized, and burned. Sequestration will require
a vast network of pipelines and pumping stations to store liquefied,
supercritical, dense-phase carbon dioxide.
There
is no guarantee that the CO2 will remain buried in the depleted oil and
gas reservoirs or geological formations they propose using since there
are numerous migration pathways for slow leakage to occur that can
contaminate ground and surface water. There is also the risk of
catastrophic escapes of CO2 that can asphyxiate vegetation at the
roots, which require oxygen, and smother all life in the immediate
vicinity at the surface.
Storing
our greenhouse gas pollution in the ocean will have severe ecological
consequences for marine life in terms of seawater acidification and
hypoxia that will ultimately lead to death for any organism that cannot
escape. Nor can we afford to further lower the pH of the seas. Ocean
sequestration is only temporary since the CO2 will eventually outgas
into the atmosphere, especially as sea-water warms.
In
reality, out of the approximately 600 coal-fired power plants in the United States, there is not a single one
that has CCS in operation. It is nothing but hype by the coal industry,
which has spent millions on ad campaigns talking up the oxymoronic
concept of "clean coal." Coal is about as clean as a
cigarette is healthy, and it should be left in the ground where Mother
Nature put it along with all the rest of the filthy fossil fuels.
They
also expect us to swallow the buckets of greenwash
coming from the nuclear power industry, designed to finagle billions in
loan guarantees from Congress and turn public opinion in favor of more
reactors. There is nothing green about nukes, nor are they by any means
carbon-neutral since greenhouse gases are generated in every stage of
the nuclear cycle.
Nonetheless,
they propose building a second generation of nuclear reactors,
threatening us with even more routine radioactive emissions, more
stockpiles of deadly wastes, and more murderous Chernobyls—which
will further irradiate all life on the planet. We must say loudly and
clearly, "Don’t nuke the climate!"
In
order to maintain the wasteful, ruinous car/truck culture, they
encourage the production of ethanol from corn and cane sugar and biodiesel from soy, rape seed, and palm oil. Corn
ethanol uses vast amounts of inputs—diesel fuel for farm machinery,
chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and large amounts of irrigation
water—pumping the Ogallala Aquifer dry.
Ethanol
plants pollute the air, soil, and water. In addition, there is just
something wrong with using a fermentation process that generates carbon
dioxide. Putting food in gas tanks is driving up food prices and
threatening the hungry with famine. The protests in Mexico over the price of maize are
an example of where things are headed.
Corn
ethanol is nothing but a massive subsidy to U.S. agribusiness, benefiting
mostly the big producers like ADM, not the small ones. Nonetheless,
there is a frantic scramble by farmers to put more acreage into corn,
planting it fence to fence, causing more soil erosion, taking land out
of conservation programs and adding to the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
The
cultivation of switchgrass on marginal lands
for cellulosic ethanol is just as foolish. A
monoculture does not an ecosystem make, even though university types
like to argue, "Oh, but it will provide habitat for wildlife
before it’s mowed."
In Brazil, cane-sugar producers are
expanding onto grazing lands, which forces ranchers to encroach on the
Amazon rainforest. Cane workers are superexploited,
toiling under miserable conditions, and there is a movement against building
anymore ethanol plants in the country. Soy production, heavily promoted
by Cargill, is also destroying huge areas of the rainforest.
In Southeast Asia, the tropical rainforests
are being burned and replaced with palm-oil plantations for the
refinement of biodiesel, at the expense of
ecosystems and the subsistence of indigenous people. Europe uses rape seed or canola
oil with absolutely no net gain in the reduction of carbon dioxide
emissions—the lesson being that burning carbohydrates instead of hydrocarbons
is not a solution to the climate crisis.
Techno-fixes and individual
solutions
Encouraging
the purchase of expensive hybrid motor vehicles that most cannot afford
does not significantly help the situation either. The planet can no
longer spare the enormous amount of resources that go into the
production of private automobiles so each of us can toot around in our
own personal little bubble. As Richard Heinberg
says, "We don’t need alternative cars. We need alternatives to
cars!" The answer is clean
mass transit run on wind and solar power.
A
revitalized rail system would include both light urban rail and
cross-country passenger and freight service. The production of electric
locomotives and train carriages is a way to create jobs. We must say,
"Fund Clean Mass Transit, Not Big Dirty Auto!
Advocating
investment in a hybrid or changing to compact fluorescent bulbs tends
to place the blame on us rather than where it really lies—with the
corporate polluters—thereby taking them conveniently off the hook. Most
so-called energy alternatives being touted are intended to reduce the U.S. dependence upon foreign oil
and enable us to keep living it up like there’s no tomorrow, rather
than cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
The
incineration of biomass for power and heating is another thing
capitalist entrepreneurs like to paint green.
Wood chips and other vegetable matter should be mulched or composted so
the nutrients can be returned to the soil.
A
wood burner was just defeated in a Minneapolis Native American and Latino
neighborhood that had already been afflicted with widespread arsenic
contamination from an old pesticide plant. They said, "No! We’ve
had enough! Get out of here!" forcing the developers to run with
their tail between their legs to another neighborhood—where they will
have to be fought.
The
emissions from refuse-derived fuel, i.e., garbage, is
full of dioxins and other toxic contaminants that erode human health.
Burning rubbish is nothing but a license to commit unbridled waste. We
should adopt a policy of zero waste by reducing, restoring, reusing,
and recycling at the point of production.
Breaking
down kitchen scraps or manure from factory farms with anaerobic
digesters to produce methane is another harebrained idea. Methane is a
powerful greenhouse gas, exceeding CO2 by 23 times. Kitchen wastes and
manure—preferably from free-range, organic livestock production
conducted on a modest scale—should be composted into humus and then
placed on the soil to re-enrich it.
Still
another indication of the bankruptcy of capitalist solutions to the
climate crisis, not to mention bourgeois science, is the proliferation
of technological fixes. Getting attention are such absurd ideas as the
launching of mirrors into space to reflect solar radiation away from
the planet. This technocratic idiocy is about as practical as
colonizing the moon or terraforming Mars to
create a neo-Earth.
Another,
on which they have actually conducted experiments, is the
geo-engineering plan to fertilize the oceans with iron to stimulate photosynthesis
in the surface waters in order to increase carbon absorption. The
result will be to alter seawater chemistry and upset the nutrient
cycle.
The
truth is that there are no magic solutions to neutralizing fossil fuel
emissions or making them just go away. We must stop burning all
hydrocarbons immediately and adopt clean renewables.
We
need to build a powerful and uncompromising environmental movement led
by working people in alliance with other oppressed groups in society.
In addition, we must infuse this new movement with eco-socialist
principles that go beyond the maintenance of capitalism and its
suicidal and genocidal policies and advance toward a zero-waste,
democratically planned socialist economy that is green and sustainable
and puts planetary and human needs before profits.
This
will enable us finally to make peace and end the war on Nature. The
only hope for future generations lies in creating a rational, humane,
ecological culture and society in which we may finally exist in harmony
along side the other life forms with whom we humbly share this world,
and live according to Nature’s laws—not those of capital.
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