Climate conference: talks collapse as corporations get their way
The recent floods which devastated Britain are just one of the many indications that serious changes are underway in the global climate. Storms in Taiwan, Brazil and Canada, floods in the Alps, Bangladesh, Japan, Vietnam and India and droughts in Burundi, Croatia Iran and Kenya suggest that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent.
This summer for the first time in at least 200,000 years water instead of ice was discovered at the North Pole, merely emphasising what many scientists have been saying for years. Human activities are changing the climate and unless action is taken now, the consequences will be severe.
In a series of conferences during the 1990s the countries present at the Hague agreed to cut their collective greenhouse emissions by an average of 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels during the years 2008-2012.
Different countries adopted different targets: the EU committed itself to a cut of 8 per cent, the USA to 7 per cent and Japan to 6 per cent. Russia and the Ukraine agreed to stabilise their emissions at 1990 levels.
The 6th Conference of the Parties (COP6) was billed as a make-or-break gathering at which countries would either accept or refuse the terms of the Kyoto protocol – agreed in that city in 1997. In order for the protocol to come into practice, it must be ratified by 55 parties to the convention. The agreement of the developed industrial countries –North America, Europe and Japan – is essential since they account for 55 per cent of the carbon dioxide emissions.
A recent report by the United Nations Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change warns that the earth may warm up by as much as six degrees Celsius during the present century, which is double previous estimates. This means ocean levels could rise by more than 50cm, threatening many islands and large swathes of coastal areas in China, south-east Asia and Africa.
Low-lying island states, in particular, insist the issue of cutting emissions is not just a matter of economics but one of sheer survival.
The great majority of scientists now accept that gases produced by burning fossil fuels such as oil are warming the planet, disrupting the climate and damaging the environment.
In 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was opened for signature. This expressed concern about the effects of climate change - desertification of former agricultural zones, the destruction of forests, the melting of polar ice caps and rising sea levels.
The main obstacle to any serious attempt to adhere to the Rio and Kyoto targets comes from the United States – the world’s only superpower.
The US with 4 per cent of the world’s population is responsible for over 25 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. In fact since Rio the US has not cut its emissions at all. They have actually risen by over 1 per cent. To meet its Kyoto targets it would now have to slash its emissions by 20-30 per cent from its likely levels at the end of this decade.
The Kyoto protocol already contained a huge get-out clause for the big economic powers – mainly the USA. An industrialised country can “invest in carbon-saving technologies in developing countries” and in the “ economies in transition” in Central and Eastern Europe.
This is a cynical device whereby the USA can simply buy the reduced emission levels of third world countries which are failing to industrialise due to the crippling burden of debt or those countries whose economies have shrunk by 50 per cent thanks to the restoration of capitalism, like the countries of the former USSR.
Now the World Bank – ever the faithful servant of US imperialism – has come up with the idea of a $150 million Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF) designed to utilise a market-based carbon offset mechanism to facilitate actual trading in the right to pollute for the USA, Canada, the European Union and Japan.
The World Bank is already a massive facilitator of pollution and global warming. Most of the World Bank's portfolio is in the energy sector – and of this about 80 per cent is in carbon-intensive power plants, notably coal-fired power plants. A study by the Institute of Policy Studies has revealed that since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 the World Bank has funded projects that will add, rather than decrease, carbon emissions.
In addition there is the US-sponsored plan, backed also by Canada, Japan and Australia, that these countries be allowed set against their emissions targets the amount of carbon dioxide that their trees and farmland take out of the air. Such lands are being referred to as “carbon sinks.”
Again to suddenly count existing forests and farmland avoids any serious effort to reduce emissions. The EU and many third world countries want to limit such credits to new forestation and changes in the natural environment to offset emissions.
Throughout the negotiations the EU painted themselves as the guardians of the environment. They have been arguing that at least half of all cuts must be made in domestic emissions and pressing for increased cuts.
However as in previous negotiations they can talk green safe in the knowledge that the Americans will never agree and then happily accept a much watered down deal. If you want evidence of that you only have to look at the British government's enthusiasm over the economic benefits of emission trading.
The sheer economic might of the USA and its multinational corporations ensured that no serious commitment to fight global warming emerged from The Hague. This is why environmental degradation is such a key issue for the developing “anti-capitalist movement”.
It is one of the issues – along with third world debt, the destruction of wage levels and social services by neo-liberalism, the domination of all aspects of life by the mega-corporations – that is waking up millions of people to the fact that to save our planet, as well as to ensure a decent life for its inhabitants CAPITALISM HAS TO GO!
Making money from a dying planet
Not only did delegates and environmentalists flock to The Hague, they were also joined by a record 3,000 industry lobbyists. In the face of overwhelming scientific evidence most corporations have now stopped denying the existence of global warming. Instead they want to make as much money out of it as possible.
So their lobbyists were there to press for the most business-friendly outcome possible, aided by the US delegation and their insistence on carbon trading. Even before any agreement had been reached on the rules governing international emission trading and joint implementation the trade in carbon has already started.
With the trade estimated to be worth in the region of $13 trillion corporations have been scrambling to get a head start. This statement from the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions succinctly sums up why:
“Early establishment of a [trading] scheme in the UK could provide UK firms with all the advantages that stem from being first movers in a growing market, as well as helping to position the City of London as a global centre of emissions trading expertise.”
To this end energy companies such as Shell and BP have initiated internal systems of trading, whereby different sections of the company trade emission reductions with each other. Trading between companies began in June after the Canadian power company TransAlta completed a carbon trade with German firm Hamburgishe Electrats-Werke AG.
The appropriately named Gemco (Greenhouse Emissions Management Consortium) has established a scheme which purchases emissions reduction credits from farmers in Iowa and sells them to Canadian power companies. Countries such as Australia and Denmark are getting in on the act and Canada introduced a number of regional pilot schemes as long ago as 1996.
Britain also stands to “gain” after exceeding its emissions target by 8 per cent mainly due to the introduction of catalytic converters and the shift away from coal fired power stations.
The UK intends to sell this so called surplus to the US for around $200 million. Stock markets are also getting involved with dealing in emissions credits taking place in the Sydney Futures Exchange and the London International Petroleum Exchange.
Thousands of lobbyists came away from The Hague happy in the knowledge that they can continue to pollute, whilst gloating at the prospects of the billions to be earned from carbon trading.
Mass protests needed
What a wonderful moment. The pieing of Frank Loy (leader of the US delegation and one of the most vociferous supporters of emission trading) in front of the world’s media brought a smile to the faces of millions around the world. But it also highlighted the problems of the protests that have accompanied these talks.
Rising Tide coalition put out a call to action requesting that affinity groups come to The Hague to conduct autonomous direct action. The problem of this is that action tends to get restricted to pies and banner drops by small groups of activists.
Of course such actions have a rightful place in the struggle. But the purpose of protest is not just to get good images for the media, it is also to draw in as many people as possible and to show the minions of international capital we mean business, that corporations cannot trash our environment and then make profits from supposed emission reductions.
This requires mass action. One visitor to the Squat being used as a base for the actions reported that some people were turning up and feeling unable to participate in autonomous actions due to their lack of experience or an affinity group. Whilst thousands of others were deterred from travelling by the elitist nature of this call. What caused the meetings in Prague and Seattle to collapse was the mass nature of the protests confronting them.
However this does not mean building the sort of passive actions advocated by Friends of the Earth and People and Planet who bussed in hundreds to place sand bags in a symbolic dyke. What is required is militant mass action, which can connect with the thousands of workers and youth who are concerned about the impact capitalism is having on the planet.
Joining with the trade unions and workers in polluting industries can prove that our fight is not with them, but with the system that compels them to work in unsafe conditions and in industries that threaten the planet.
Such a campaign could have mobilised thousands and forced the conference to take notice of the real victims of climate change rather than the industry lobbyists who are squealing about lost profits.
