A people's alternative to the Copenhagen cop-out

The collapse of the Copenhagen conference just before Christmas exploded the myth that somewhere down the road is a multinational agreement on climate change, negotiated through the UN and leading to serious reductions in emissions.

UN Climate Negotiator Yves De Boer yesterday admitted that future negotiations will consist of the powerful nations carving out a deal to be imposed on the rest. De Boer has cynically taken the new reality imposed at Copenhagen and adopted it as policy.

“You cannot have 192 countries involved in discussing all the details ...You do have to safeguard transparency by allowing countries to decide if they want to be represented by others, and that if a debate is advanced then the conclusion is brought back to the larger community," he said.

So people spent years of their lives carefully preparing documents to form a successor binding treaty to Kyoto, and then arrived on the last day to have a 13-paragraph stitch-up thrust at them with two hours to discuss it and sign. It had been prepared by 26 government leaders led by Obama with no reference to anyone.

And now this wretched document is now contemptuously ignored by the very people who wrote it. It included a deadline of 31 January for countries to register the level of emissions reductions they would set out to achieve. With 10 days, to go only 20 of 192 countries have bothered. So now the deadline has been dropped. This is how De Boer explained what happened:

“I do not expect everyone to meet the deadline. Countries are not being asked if they want to adhere… but to indicate if they want to be associated [with the Copenhagen accord]. It's a soft deadline. Countries are not being asked to sign the accord to take on legally binding targets, only to indicate their intention.”

Bolivia distinguished itself at Copenhagen by disassociating itself from the deal and yesterday proposed an entirely different approach to global action on climate change.

Speaking at the UN in New York, Pablo Solon-Romero, deputy permanent representative of Bolivia, said the only effective way to stave off the life-threatening effects of climate change is “to build a true consensus in favour of structural change in global consumption patterns with the participation of all the world’s peoples”.

Speaking at press conference to launch the People’s World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights to be held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in April, he said greenhouse gas emissions were effects of a “wasteful, unequal system of economics and consumption” He added that the upcoming event would discuss what changes must be made to that model in order to reduce greenhouse gases in a way that was fair to all countries and peoples, and to protect the “rights of Mother Earth”.

The Cochabamba conference aims at developing a set of ideas that will allow the participation of all humankind in ecological policy, including a global referendum on climate change.

Of course, the big NGOs will treat the Bolivian initiative as just another opportunity to put pressure on the “real” negotiating process. Already they are packing their suitcases and preparing their caravans for Mexico next year, for yet another expensive waste of time.

A World to Win sees Cochabamba very differently, as an opportunity to begin to develop the replacement for the process that failed at Copenhagen. We urgently need a new kind of international co-operation to replace one which simply imposes the will of the corporations and their client governments.

It would bring together the peoples of the planet in a democratic forum to plan together to halt the growth in emissions and to mitigate the impacts that are now inevitable. They would draw on all the great expertise represented by climate scientists, world food and health experts and support each others’ development towards self-government and independence. The conference in Bolivia is an important step in this direction and should be supported.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

System change, not climate change!

Halting climate change and preventing further, catastrophic damage to the world’s ecosystems will require mass action against the very politicians and business interests that are gathering in Copenhagen for next week’s summit.

That much is clear from their abject failure to take the kind of action that would cut carbon emissions in any serious way. Leading climate scientists like James Hansen admit that Copenhagen is doomed and even say that no agreement would be better than the half-baked deals on the table.

These are centred around widely-discredited carbon trading schemes and carbon offsets. Capitalism doesn’t get more obscene that creating markets to buy and sell the very stuff that is killing off the planet’s life support systems. And it is not as if the schemes work.

As Carbon Trade Watch has shown, carbon trading does not actually reduce any emissions. It simply gives corporations greater room to manoeuvre through the sale of permits. Instead of cleaning up its act, one polluter can then trade these permits with another who might make “equivalent” changes more cheaply.

The EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the world’s largest carbon market (worth $68 billion in 2008) has consistently failed to “cap” emissions while the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) based on carbon offsets, which are also traded, routinely favours environmentally ineffective and socially unjust projects.

Hansen, who heads the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, says scathingly of carbon trading and offsetting: "This is analogous to the indulgences that the Catholic church sold in the middle ages. The bishops collected lots of money and the sinners got redemption. Both parties liked that arrangement despite its absurdity. That is exactly what's happening. We've got the developed countries who want to continue more or less business as usual and then these developing countries who want money and that is what they can get through offsets.”

So Copenhagen is aimed at preserving the status quo, whereby the very same market forces that have driven climate change are the only devices on offer for tackling exactly the same problem! We should not be surprised, however. The United Nations which hosts the summit has teamed up with big business in a “compact”, urging them to find “green solutions” towards a “sustainable economy”.

No treaty that binds countries to cut carbon emissions or face international sanctions will ever be signed so long as big business rules the roost at the UN as well as in the cabinet rooms of the world’s major governments. No treaty will ever be signed so long as the global economy remains driven by year-on-year increases in corporate profits and the relentless expansion of the production of commodities.

For Brown, Obama and the rest the priority is economic “recovery” based on a “return to growth”. In other words, back to the destruction of resources through an expansion of fossil-fuel based production and consumption. And they say there is such a thing as “sustainable capitalism”!

At Copenhagen, Climate Justice Action (CJA) wants to take over the summit for a day and set up a Peoples Assembly. The Danish state will no doubt try and prevent real voices disrupting the cosy, meaningless deliberations of the summit but CJA’s demand for “system change, not climate change” is absolutely right.

Copenhagen’s failure demonstrates clearly that the present capitalist system and its supine leaders have lost all legitimacy and authority. Creating permanent Peoples Assemblies in Britain and other countries as a step to transferring power out of the hands of the political, economic and financial elites and creating a democratic, sustainable society is definitely the way forward.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Achieving climate change justice

The chief climate change negotiator for the developing nations has demanded that the rich world agrees to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2020, from 1990 levels, or there can be no deal at Copenhagen.

During the final preparatory talks in Barcelona, Sudanese diplomat Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, who leads the negotiating team from the G77/China bloc, was adamant that only a reduction of this order could save millions from the impact of climate change, by keeping the rise in global temperatures since the pre-industrial era to 1.5 degrees or certainly below 2 degrees.

"Anything less than 40% means Africa's land mass is offered destruction as the only alternative," he said.Meanwhile the Canadian negotiator said his country’s non-negotiable offer was a cut of 3% over 1990 levels. The EU is considering 30%. The US is not offering anything specific.

The developing world frames the argument in terms of justice – they have not created the problem of climate change but it is countries of the south who will suffer the worst consequences. Seen in this way, the developed economies’ attitude is a continuation of the process whereby the west grew rich from the seizure of land, labour and raw materials from Africa, Asia and South America. Now the balance must be redressed.

Bangladesh, for example, has one of the lowest levels of energy consumption of any country, but its very existence is threatened by climate change. The United States has a carbon footprint 70 times higher than that of Bangladesh. There is no doubt that there is a serious injustice here.

The problem however is that justice for the poor is not achievable within the existing global capitalist economy and it is certainly not something that the wealthy countries deliver even to their own people, with unemployment soaring, homelessness on the increase and hard-won rights under attack.

ALL the governments and institutions meeting in Copenhagen support the continuation of the global capitalist economy and offer no alternatives. They are not there to look after the interests of their people, or the interests of people in countries affected by climate change.

Amongst the bloc making the demand for a 40% cut is the Chinese government – rich, repressive and itself plundering the oil and land resources of Africa and the Middle East. Its own people have few rights and their land too is being privatised, monetised and plundered.

The government of Sudan has rented out thousands of acres of fertile farm land to global agri-business to achieve the kinds of farming intensity that have contributed to global warming – the manufacture of fertilizers is one of the processes that contribute most to greenhouse gas emissions.

South African agri-business has been offered up 10 million hectares (24.7 million acres) of land to farm in the Republic of Congo and 35,000 hectares in Libya. Uganda and Angola are also inviting the big South African farming corporations in.

The question that immediately arises is, whose land was it before? It wasn’t empty. Where are the people who farmed it for their own benefit?

So whilst climate change is certainly an issue of justice, it is not only the injustice of exploitation of rich countries by poor, but of the working class and peasants in every country by their own ruling capitalist class, desperate to join the global capitalist élite.

The argument that the wealthy countries of the west should reduce carbon emissions at a higher rate so that developing countries can continue their development, has a ring of fairness to it. But what is this development to be? Who will benefit from it? Without economic, political and social revolution, it will not be the people of those developing countries, that’s for certain.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Emissions of hypocrisy on the increase

Sonorous Presbyterian tones rumble through the room: “We have fewer than fifty days to save our planet from catastrophe.” Gordon Brown is preaching to the Major Economies Forum. Yet Brown and his government stand accused of being amongst the world’s greatest climate change hypocrites.

Hypocrisy no. 1
The Treasury has gone to court to defend the right of the state-owned RBS bank to finance companies involved in enterprises that pollute the planet, add to emissions and seize land from indigenous people.

Campaigners from Platform, the World Development Movement and People & Planet vowed to appeal after failing to convince a High Court judge to order a judicial review of the Treasury’s position on RBS investments. In particular they highlight Vedanta, which is mining bauxite on sacred land in Orissa in India. A scathing report from the government’s own business department accuses Vedanta of disrespecting the rights of indigenous people.

The Treasury hired a high-price QC to defend its position that it would be wrong to consider climate change and human rights when it evaluates the "commercial" interests of state-owned bank.

Hypocrisy no. 2
The government has been exaggerating its claims of reductions in CO2 emissions, according to the UK Statistics Authority. Sir Michael Scholar, the authority’s chair, has accused the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) of producing “unsatisfactory data”.

Scholar wrote to Tim Yeo, chairman of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, saying that a statistical bulletin released by the DECC in February “fell short” of the code of practice for government statistics.

The government claims CO2 emissions have fallen by 12.8% compared to 1990 levels. But almost a third of that is made up of carbon credits purchased by polluters in the EU trading scheme and do not represent actual cuts. The real reduction is more like 8.5%.

Scholar told the Commons committee: "In this case, the figures mentioned are, in our view, likely to be used by non-expert observers to judge progress in reducing CO2 emissions within the UK. We regard the quoted figures, and particularly the percentage change, as unsatisfactory in the context of that use."

Hypocrisy no. 3
The government own Climate Change Committee suggests that only the recession, resulting in less energy use by industry, can save New Labour from failing to meet targets. From 2003 to 2007 greenhouse gas emissions were falling at less than 1% each year, well below the target.

The Committee also said that much of the reduction in recent years has been in non-CO2 gases. CO2 emissions in the period 2003-07 averaged a 0.6% annual reduction. Where CO2 emissions have fallen, the extent to which this has been through implementation of measures to improve energy or carbon efficiency is very limited. Broadly speaking, it has been as a result of carbon offsetting.

Of course when it comes to hypocrisy, Brown is not alone in advance of the Copenhagen climate change summit in December. His EU colleagues talk big numbers but in reality, Germany, Italy and Poland have no intention of acting because they put achieving a return to capitalist economic growth before everything else.

And you could argue that the world’s number one hypocrite is China. If it was truly “the People’s Republic”, they would be acting now to prevent the impact of climate change on the Chinese people. As it is, Beijing is playing diplomatic games with the major economies over carbon emissions. Meanwhile, China is engaged in the large-scale buying up of resources in Africa and the Middle East with absolutely no concern for the environment.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

US and EU scupper climate summit

International talks preparing for the Copenhagen climate summit are in disarray and on the point of collapse, as the science is pushed to one side and the discussion descends into self-seeking wrangling. The United States says it will not sign up to an agreement that includes the Kyoto Protocol. Since other countries thought they were negotiating a successor treaty to Kyoto, this is a major blow.

The US wants historic responsibility for climate change on the part of the earliest industrialised countries removed from the picture and countries to set their own emissions reductions targets. But India and China say they will not sign up to any agreement that does not include Kyoto principles.

The existing protocol sets specific emissions target for each industrialised nation while allowing them to use carbon trading schemes to buy or sell “credits”. The protocol was never ratified by the US and the Obama administration has also declined to endorse it.

The European Union signed up to Kyoto but spokesperson Karl Falkenbert now agrees with the US. His smokescreen? "We look at the Kyoto protocol, but since it came into force we have seen emissions increase. It has not decreased emissions.”

All that is true, but the question is, why was it not made clear four years ago that Copenhagen was about negotiating an entirely new framework treaty? Starting on negotiations for a new treaty now means that talks will rumble on into 2015/2016 with no action taken.

At present, the only US offer on the table is a 17% cut from 2005 emission levels by 2020, and even that has not made its into law, though between the recession and carbon off-setting, the US could meet that target without making any real reductions at all.

Even the modest cap-and-trade scheme proposed by the Obama administration is foundering, as frightened Democrats give in to the Republican Right. The only legislation that looks likely to pass is an Energy Bill with a small commitment to renewables, and a rider allowing extensive drilling for new oil and gas off the Florida coast.

Organisations like the Association of Small Island States are in despair. The Maldives, Kiribati, and some of the Bahamas, would be inundated by sea levels more than one metre above current levels – which could happen by 2100, if warming is not kept to a minimum of 1.5%. Samoa, Fiji and other south sea islands have already lost hundreds of acres of coast to rising sea levels.

AOSIS representative Dessima Williams, from Grenada, said: "We face an emergency. We want commitments. We did not create the problem. Any mechanism currently in use is one we want to maintain. National actions are important but they are no substitutes for an international framework.”

But the survival of small island nations is not a priority at Copenhagen, nor drought, hunger, disease or wars over resources. The only priority is the need for capitalist business-as-usual.

There is a kind of liberal piety that says that China historically did not create the emissions, so should not hold back development by making substantial cuts now. But industrial development is not taking place for the benefit of ordinary Chinese. Poverty in the countryside, low wages in the factories and political repression everywhere are the Chinese realities. We should be demanding that all global industries start now to prioritise emissions reductions over profits – wherever they are located on the planet.

Profit-driven forms of production are unsustainable – in terms of climate and the eco-system, raw materials and human health – but capitalism will not vote itself out of prime position at the heart of all international debates. In the end, it will have to be physically removed by the mass action of millions – and we need to do it soon, for our own survival.

Penny Cole
Environment editor