Joy Macready
Decembers United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen – or COP15 – were supposed to be the ‘great leap forward’ for taking action on climate change. When talks broke down in Bali two years ago, with the US backing away from any binding emission reduction targets, the Copenhagen summit was hailed as the place where a deal would be done to replace the Kyoto Protocols, which expire in 2012.
Yet the UN has spent these past few weeks scaling back its expectations of reaching an agreement on a new treaty to slow global warning. Even UN climate convention executive secretary, Yvo de Boer, admits that it is now “unrealistic” to expect a treaty to be negotiated and agreed by the end of the year. This looks particularly likely after the recent talks in Bangkok, where disagreement over the new treaty’s legally-binding aspects looks likely to derail any deal. Many developing nations have long accused western countries of wanting to make targets more flexible, which they justifiably fear will only allow these nationals extra “wriggle room” to dodge emission cuts.
Eyes on the big polluters
In June, the G8 and a number of large developing countries agreed that the average temperature rise since pre-industrial times should be limited to 2ºC, but they still have no concrete roadmap as to how to make that happen. While, even if this is achieved, many scientists have pointed out the effects of even a 1 or 0.5-1ºC rise could be devastating.
The biggest polluters China and the US, which each account for about 20 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas pollution from coal, natural gas and oil, have been making the right noises in the past few months, but without any real figures or plans to back up their rhetoric. China’s president Hu Jintao said that it would curb its carbon emissions by a “notable margin” by 2020 from the 2005 level.
US president Barack Obama, on the other hand, is putting his weight behind the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (Boxer-Kerry bill), which passed through the House of Representatives in June by a tiny margin of 219-212. The bill was to enter the Senate in July but is facing heavy opposition by the oil industry, led by the American Petroleum Institute, whose intent is to bury the bill.
The EU, which is responsible for 14 per cent of the world’s emissions, thinks the answer lies not in pushing harder for member states to reach their reduction targets, but in throwing money at the problem. The EU summit has agreed to pay 7 billion euro a year for three years to developing nations as part of a global climate deal – but the contributions are voluntary, meaning that they may not be made at all.
Gordon Brown, trying to paint himself as a climate champion, said Europe is leading the way in “making these bold proposals”. But, as many nations devastated by natural disasters discovered, aid pledges are one thing, actually getting the money is quite another matter. And during an economic downturn, where will the money come from?
Brown’s government had the opportunity to show its commitment to shifting to a renewable energy source when the owners of the Vestas factory, the only one in the UK producing wind turbine blades, threatened to shut it down. The 600 workers facing redundancy led a militant fightback, occupying the factory not just for their jobs but for the environment. When faced with the workers’ demand for nationalisation, Energy and Climate Secretary Ed Miliband just said “no”.
The need for a plan
Needless to say, the 7 billion euro promised to combat climate change is a paltry sum compared to the £1.3 trillion that Brown threw down the black hole of the bank bailouts. But throwing money at the problem isn’t going to work. What is needed is conscious restructuring – a planned shift away from carbon-intensive production and transport to a low-carbon society. This has to be done on an international scale with a level of political commitment that is completely lacking today.
Even the Committee on Climate Change, led by Lord Adair Turner, who is also chair of the Financial Services Authority, agrees this will not happen without a major change in policies – “which must entail a switch away from reliance on market forces to encourage investment in low-carbon technology”.
There are organisations that argue that the global recession provides an opportunity to curb climate change and build a low-carbon future. The International Energy Agency (IEA) calculates that global greenhouse gas emissions will fall by 3 per cent this year – an increase on previous estimates.
During a recession, production levels – and therefore emissions – drop as factories shut down, trade drops and shipping decreases. But the recession also has a massive impact on the quality of people’s lives as they are thrown on the dole and forced into poverty.
That’s what so crucial about the socialist answer. There is after all a simple reason for two decades of climate talk failure: the near-universal refusal of world governments to do anything that might undermine the profits and vested interests of big capital.
And that’s why socialists want to take profit out of the equation by fighting for the nationalisation of these corporate giants under workers control and taxing the rich to fund a massive expansion in renewable energy. But until we’ve got rid of the profit system once and for all, we will never be realise sustainable and equitable development – we need socialist, democratic planning to guarantee the lives of future generations.