Socialist Action /September 1999
It's Going to Get Hotter: Global Warming's Looming Catastrophe
By PAUL SIEGEL
Ross Gelbspan, "The Heat is On: The High Stakes Battle Over Earth's
Threatened Climate." Addison-Wesley, 1997. 278 pp. $23.
Global warming is not a speculative theory about something that may or
may not happen in the future.
The 2500 leading climate scientists of the world, brought together by
the United Nations in a body called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, announced in a series of reports beginning in 1990 that the earth
is warming, primarily as a result of the "greenhouse" effect caused
by the trapping of the sun's heat by the emissions from coal and oil burning.
Already there have been extreme changes in the weather. In fact, since
1980, the hottest 10 years on record, the hottest consecutive five years
(1991-1995) on record, and the hottest year (1995) on record have all occurred.
The earth is heating up at a faster rate than at any time in the last 10,000
years.
The panel, one of the most authoritative bodies of scientists ever convened,
warned of a rise in average global temperature of six to eight degrees Fahrenheit
in the next century. This is about the same rise that occurred from the
time of the Ice Age of 20,000 years ago until now.
The panel further stated that, unless in very short order fossil fuel
emissions are reduced by from 50 percent to 70 percent from 1990 levels,
there will be "extreme high temperature events, floods (caused by melting
glaciers and ice caps), and droughts, with resultant consequences for fires,
pest outbreaks, and ecosystem[s]." These are "likely to cause
widespread economic, social, and environmental dislocation."
This is the message of Ross Gelbspan's book, published in 1997. A Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist who is a science writer and an investigative reporter,
Gelbspan writes clearly and vigorously, documenting what he has to say from
scientific sources.
Gelbspan reveals that the so-called greenhouse skeptics consist of a
dozen or so scientists financed by the trillion-dollar-a-year global coal
and oil industries that taken together form the biggest enterprise in history.
This financing, generally unadmitted until they were placed under oath,
came from such sources as Exxon, Shell, ARCO, Sun Oil, the Western Fuels
Association, the German Coal Mining Association, the British Coal Corporation,
the government of Kuwait, and various lobbying groups set up by domestic
and foreign coal and oil interests.
Some of these scientists have connections with ultra-right organizations
such as the John Birch Society and the church of the Reverend Sun Myung
Moon.
Despite their background, however, and the fact that they did not publish
in scientific journals, where their arguments would have been subject to
review by their peers as a condition for publication, their writing and
testimony have been given prominence in the media and before Congress, serving
to suggest that there is scientific uncertainty about global warming.
Not only is there, however, near-unanimous belief among climate scientists
that global warming is here and will increase greatly in the near future,
but many believe that it will increase at an ever-accelerating rate. Drought,
desiccation, and accompanying fires, brought about by global warming, will
destroy large tracts of forest that absorb carbon dioxide. This in turn
will lead to a further greenhouse effect, creating an increasingly intensified
warming.
In any event, the increasing manifestations of global warming have already
caused important segments of big business, driven by their own interests,
to begin arraying themselves against Big Oil and Big Coal. In the forefront
is the insurance industry.
Between 1980 and 1989, the insurance industry had to pay less than an
average $2 billion a year for property damage caused by the weather; between
1990 and 1995 it had to pay an average $30 billion a year.
No wonder that the general manager of a giant insurance firm spoke of
the "significant body of evidence" indicating that "the [recent]
record insured loss from natural catastrophes was not a random occurrence,"
and that the president of the Reinsurance Association of America said climate
change "could bankrupt the industry."
Aligned with the insurance industry are the alternative energy industry-which
uses such means as solar power, wind power, and natural gas-and non-energy
industries that seek to insure that any response to climate change does
not hold them back in their race against competitors.
Gelbspan at one point states that "the emerging alliances between
insurers and non-oil big business hold significant promise as a positive
force for large-scale change."
However, he is ambivalent and even self-contradictory concerning the
promise these alliances hold, saying elsewhere, "What the climate crisis
requires ... is a plan that is not bound by the requirements of the marketplace.
No climate plan that is designed to provide profits or protect corporate
competitive advantage will work."
Simply to promote the use of climate-friendly technology here and its
exportation abroad is not enough. We have all the requisite knowledge to
switch now from fossil fuel energy to other forms of energy, but what is
needed is a massive infusion of capital to make this switch. This is needed
above all in the countries that are in the process of becoming industrialized
or are not yet industrialized.
Gelbspan notes, "Under the babble of diplomatic double talk in the
climate negotiations, one clear message has emerged: the issue of global
economic inequity is as critical as the carbon balance to the stability
of the planet's atmosphere." A solution to the problem of global economic
inequity must be found if the problem of global warming is to be solved.
China, for example, "is staggering under the pressure of an increasingly
fragile food supply and diminishing water resources. At this point the government
sees no alternative but to promote the country's economic growth as rapidly
as possible. Thus, while energy consumption in the United States, Europe,
and Japan rose by about 28 percent between 1970 and 1990, it rose by almost
10 times that amount-208 percent-during the same period in China."
The evidence that fossil fuel burning is creating a catastrophic change
in the global climate has become so strong that Mobil corporation-which,
like other members of Big Oil, long denied the evidence-now acknowledges
it but blames primarily "developing countries" for the dangers
facing us.
This the new Big Oil strategy for holding back any restrictions upon
it: demand that the "developing countries" first do their share.
In one of its "public service" advertisements, for which it
gets a tax write-off, Mobil concludes (The New York Times, Aug. 5, 1999):
"Advanced technology widely implemented by developed nations can cut
global emissions," but "the sheer growth-more than doubling-in
emissions that will occur in the rest of the world simply overwhelms these
reductions."
It should be noted, however, that the projection for developed countries
is only speculative-and that the past record of developed countries in meeting
announced goals is the reverse of encouraging. Compliance with the "modest
commitments" made in climate negotiations by the various countries,
said an analysis sponsored by the U.S. Environment al Protection Agency,
has been "appalling."
Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, according to
the Department of Energy, continued to rise in 1995, the last date available
to Gelbspan.
Furthermore, it must be pointed out that the advanced capitalist countries
are responsible for 80 percent of the world's pollution. The rate of growth
in emissions in the undeveloped countries may be much greater than in the
developed countries, but the total amount of emissions is much less.
As Gelbspan paraphrases the Indian co-author of "Global Warming
in an Unequal World," "Clearly any attempt to impose the same
restrictions on the poor countries-where per-capita consumption of coal
and oil has been comparatively tiny-as would fall on the rich countries,"
which have achieved their dominance by polluting the atmosphere for the
past 200 years, "amounts to nothing less than 'environmental colonialism.'"
It would be like demanding in the name of equality of sacrifice that
a wealthy household should not he required to give up more for the general
welfare than a household on the verge of starvation.
"A transfer of wealth-in the form of clean energy technologies-will
be necessary," says Gelbspan, "to help the poorer countries leap-frog
over the archaic and destructive type of industrialization that is powered
by coal and oil and use energy from the sun, the wind, and the rivers to
develop their economies."
To put into effect this and the necessary changes in the advanced countries,
Gelbspan proposes a plan. He suggests that "a brain trust-of industrial
leaders, engineers, government officials, energy specialists, and parents-would
decide which kinds of renewable, climate-friendly energy are appropriate
for different uses and different settings."
"An international enforcement agency of governments," says
Gelbspan, would then gradually channel the trillion-dollar-a-year revenue
of the coal and oil industries into an international fund that would finance
renewable energy throughout the world, paying the coal and oil stockholders
compensation through a tax on fossil fuels.
The weakness of Gelbspan's proposal is that it relies for its planning
and execution on the very industrial leaders whom he has shown to be primarily
concerned with the bottom lines of their own companies and on the government
officials whom he has shown to kowtow to them. For the gigantic changes
in direction that are necessary, nothing less than world-wide social revolution
will do.
Can the political force, based on the world working class, to accomplish
this be built and triumph in the time we have left? We can only say that,
for the sake of humanity, it had better be.
Socialist Action /September 1999 |