https://socialistaction.org/2018/12/27/cop24-during-the-disaster-the-comedy-continues/
COP24: During the disaster, the comedy continues
/ 14 hours ago
Poland Climate
Climate activists attend the March for Climate in a protest against
global warming in Katowice, Poland, Saturday, Dec. 8, 2018, as the COP24
UN Climate Change Conference takes place in the city. (AP Photo/Alik
Keplicz)
By DANIEL TANURO
Dec. 19—The Twenty-Fourth United Nations Climate Change Conference
(COP24) has just concluded in Katowice, Poland. Instead of responding to
the clear message of the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) Special Report to take urgent measures to keep warming
below 1.5° C above pre-industrial levels, the Conference struggled to
set the rules that each state will have to follow to account for its
greenhouse gas emissions after 2020. The IPCC report was essentially
ignored, the “raising of ambitions” was postponed to a later date, and
the “developing countries” must be content with vague promises about a
Green Climate Fund.
The COP21 in Paris set a course: “Stay well below 2° C warming compared
to the pre-industrial era while continuing efforts not to exceed 1.5°
C.” In the wake of this decision, the IPCC was tasked with drafting a
special report on 1.5° C. Last October, this alarming report concluded
that humanity has a mere dozen years (as a maximum) to avoid a massive
cataclysm, and that significant changes at all levels of society are
essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 and end them
completely by 2050.
In Katowice, the United States, supported by Russia, Saudi Arabia, and
Kuwait, fought to prevent the alarm raised by the scientists being heard
by the world’s governments. They achieved their goals, inasmuch as COP24
finally confined itself to thanking the IPCC for submitting its report
on time. The eight-page statement adopted by the conference does not
once allude to the absolute urgency highlighted by the IPCC. While
national government climate plans (“Nationally Determined
Contributions,” NDCs, in jargon) put into perspective a catastrophic
warming of 2.7 to 3.7° C, no state has taken steps to strengthen its
commitments. We will see later how to bridge the gap between the words
of Paris and the action of governments … if it is bridged.
Goodbye, differentiated responsibilities
The blind eye turned to the IPCC diagnosis is not the only cause of
outrage at this COP. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (Rio, 1992) states that global warming is a “common but
differentiated responsibility.” It is therefore a question of
distributing the efforts because the so-called “developed” countries
bear the main historical responsibility for the warming. This clause,
fundamental for the countries of the South, has, since the beginning of
the negotiations, been in the sights of the rich countries, particularly
the United States. However, under the guise of standardized emission
accounting procedures, the COP 24 marks a new stage in its progressive
re-traction.
COP24 has effectively decided that the CO2 emissions of a rich
country—which could perfectly well immediately stop burning coal to
produce electricity—are put on par with those of a poor country, which
does not have the financial and technological means to develop green
alternatives. This equivalence would certainly be justified if the
assistance of the developed countries to the energy transition of the
southern countries were real, substantial, unconditional, and
proportional to the historical responsibilities. But this is not the case.
The one hundred billion a year of the “green fund for the climate”
promised from 2020 (a sum which is anyway completely insufficient to
finance the transition and adaptation) remain mostly a promise on paper,
and the rich countries turn a deaf ear when the poorest claim
compensation for loss and damage caused to their countries by more
violent typhoons and other extreme weather events.
Cynically, those who, like Trump, deny the reality of “anthropogenic”
climate change—while they are primarily responsible for it—do not
hesitate to use the “ecological emergency” to stifle issues of social
justice. Justice in the North-South relations, obviously, but also in
the relations between rich and poor, in the North as in the South.
The movement of yellow jackets [in France] clearly shows that there is
no way out of the climate crisis through a neoliberal policy that makes
gifts to the rich in the name of competitiveness, on the one hand, and
taxes the poor in the name of the environment, on the other hand. Yet it
is this hypocritical and unjust policy that governments want to
intensify, in the name of saving the climate. In particular, through the
introduction (remitted to a subsequent COP) of a global carbon price and
a new “market mechanism” to generalize the commodification of
ecosystems, with tradable emission rights thrown in.
Growth or climate? Jesus or Barabbas?
At the end of this COP, the comments of most observers oscillate between
the image of the glass half full and the glass half empty. They deplore
the slowness in the implementation of the “good agreement”” of Paris.
But this slowness does not stem solely from the Polish presidency’s poor
presidency of the COP, its submission to coal interests (COP24 was
sponsored by the biggest European coal mining company), or the crisis
the nasty Trump has opened up in the “multilateral “model of management
of international relations. More fundamentally, it stems from the
impossibility of solving the climate equation without breaking with the
productivist logic of capitalism. So COP21 should be re-examined, to see
the dark side of the “good agreement” of Paris.
Saving the climate means stopping growth. To put it simply, it is
necessary to produce less and to share more, which capitalism is
fundamentally incapable of. In other words, there is a profound
antagonism between the solution of the climate crisis, on the one hand,
and the capitalist logic of accumulation, on the other. For a quarter of
a century, COPs have done nothing but turn around this dilemma: growth
or climate? Jesus or Barabbas? The Paris agreement gave the impression
that a solution was found, but it was only a statement of intentions, a
sleight of hand. Because, behind the scenes, the “good agreement”” was
underpinned by a crazy and criminal capitalist project: the “temporary
exceeding” of the threshold of danger of warming. Barabbas is free,
Christ is sacrificed, Pilate is washing his hands.
A scenario of sorcerer’s apprentices
The idea is as follows: the 1.5° C bar will be crossed in
2030-2040—growth for profit requires it!—but “negative emission
technologies” and geo-engineering will help cool the climate in the
second half of the century. Sleep in peace, good people, everything is
under control … Implicit in the Paris agreement, this scenario is now
quite explicit in the scientific publications that serve as a basis for
climate negotiators—including in the work of the IPCC.
This project of “temporary exceeding” is worthy of sorcerer’s
apprentices, for at least two reasons: (1) the technologies in question
are hypothetical, even dangerous (ecologically and socially), and (2)
irreversible disasters—for example, a dislocation of ice caps causing a
rise of several meters of the level of the oceans!—could occur during
the interval. But the sorcerer’s apprentices have the ears of “elites”
because their “solution” seems to allow postponing the dilemma of growth
to later. Suddenly, it leaves fossil fuel multinationals and the banks
that finance them the necessary time to make their huge investments in
coal, oil, gas profitable. De facto, the alliance of fossil fuels and
finance dictates the pace and forms of the energy transition.
Totally dedicated to the imperatives of profit, competitiveness (between
companies, but also be-tween states protecting “their” companies) the
negotiators affect to believe that the God of Tech-nology will come to
the rescue of their market economy and its corollary: infinite growth.
Hence their indifference to the current catastrophe and their
enthusiasm, even their sincerity, to (try to make us believe) they have
reached a “historic agreement” – once again. During the disaster, the
comedy continues.
Social justice, climate justice: the same struggle
After this COP24, one thing should be crystal clear: there is nothing,
absolutely nothing to expect from the governments, from the United
Nations, from the Talanoa Dialogue, from the “High Ambition Coalition”
and so on. We must abandon radically any illusion about the possibility
of convincing all those responsible for the chaos, whoever they are, of
the benefits they would incur by “taking leadership” to “raise
ambitions” by piloting a “just transition” towards “sustainable
development” and so on. They want nothing to do with it, period.
All this blah-blah, all this stage management, has one purpose: to put
people to sleep, neutralize their thinking, paralyze their
organizations. This is the spider’s strategy. To collaborate is to throw
oneself into the web.
In Belgium, the stalemate of the collaborative strategy of the major
environmental associations (and the trade-union leaderships that support
them) has come to light. Indeed, in the aftermath of the huge climate
demonstration in early December (75,000 people in Brussels), the
“Climate Coalition” and the “Climate Express” urged that the right-wing
government should not fall from power, while Greenpeace begged the king
to convince the political class of the climate emergency. Without
success, of course. Is it not obvious that this way is a dead end? When
all earthly remedies have been exhausted, it will only be left to
implore a divine intervention.
This stalemate is in all respects like that into which the trade-union
leaderships sank at the end of 2014, halting their action plan “to give
a chance for consultation.” We know what has become of it: the
right-wing government has regained confidence and dismantled, one after
the other, many social conquests.
Whether in social or environmental matters, the conclusion is clear: the
only message these leaders understand is that of force. It is therefore
necessary to build a relationship of forces and, for that, there is only
one way: to unite the struggles for climate justice and social justice
in an anti-capitalist perspective.
Daniel Tanuro, a certified agriculturalist and eco-socialist
environmentalist, writes for “La gauche” (the monthly of the LCR-SAP,
Belgian section of the Fourth International). This article appeared in
International Viewpoint, the English-language journal of the Fourth
International.
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December 27, 2018 in Environment. Tags: climate
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