Blair keeps the wheels of profit turning

Former Prime Minister Blair put in a rare but brief television appearance last night. My, but how he has aged! His new death’s head mask is entirely appropriate for the role he is now playing.

Blair, you will recall, was the prime minister who co-organised the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan on a series of lies and deceptions. His sponsorship of the “war on terror” resulted in illegal abductions and torture, for which he could yet be held responsible.

In between times, he successfully destroyed the old Labour Party and created inequalities of wealth in Britain unseen for a century.

On leaving office, he was given the role of ambassador for the Quartet (United Nations, European Union, Russia and the United States) whose aim is to make a deal between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

in May this year Blair received a $1.4 million award from the Israeli Dan David Foundation for his "exceptional leadership". So much for his “independence”. No wonder Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is able to continue with his country’s illegal settlement building without fear of rebuke from Blair (or Obama, for that matter).

Now Blair, who earns $9 million a year as an “adviser” to JP Morgan and Zurich Insurance, has popped up with a report on climate change. He presented it to the United Nations yesterday as officials struggled to prevent the Copenhagen climate summit scheduled for December from collapsing before it even gets under way.

Blair chaired a group that insists that in tackling global warming, economic growth and consumption have to be sustained, which is a big lie. He said: “Forging and implementing a global deal will not be easy but world leaders can be confident that reaching a deal is both achievable and consistent with their measures to promote economic recovery.”

He was speaking to the converted. For the majority of those gathered at both the UN before going on to the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, the unquestionable, underpinning assumption is that any action on climate change is subordinated to the profit-yielding growth in the production of commodities.

Chinese leader Hu Jintao explicitly tied his country’s new commitment to environmental concerns to reducing the growth of climate change emissions per unit of Gross Domestic Product. Rather than the dramatic reductions needed to bring the current atmospheric concentration back below the danger levels already extant, he intends the Chinese economy to continue to grow rapidly, and carbon dioxide emissions will continue to follow it, just a bit more slowly.

But the evidence is against even that modest aim.

Andrew Sentance, a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee summarises the whole problem. His paper, Energy and Environmental Challenges in the New Global Economy, shows that growth in energy consumption has increased relative to the growth in GDP in recent decades. Sentance adds:

“On the environmental front, a return to global economic growth will put upward pressure on the output of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses as energy consumption increases. A resumption of global growth will therefore tend to raise emissions, moving them in the opposite direction to the big emissions cuts that will ultimately be necessary to stabilise the global climate. Over the course of the next decade, however, we will need to start to reverse this trend of rising emissions without jeopardising the growth of the global economy and the development aspirations of poorer nations around the world.”

Just how this is to be achieved he doesn’t (or can’t) explain.

The limits of what can be squeezed out of people and the planet in the name of profit have been reached. It is now time to salvage the recyclable, reusable components of the bankrupt capitalist economy, and direct them in sustainable production satisfying the democratically-determined needs of the world’s population.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor

Too many people? No - too much capitalism!

The climate summit scheduled for Copenhagen in December is in big trouble before it even gets under way. Major divisions have opened up between the United States, Europe and China and there are serious doubts about whether an effective international agreement can be reached on cuts on carbon emissions.

It appears that the US wants a completely new treaty, rather than a Kyoto Mark II. This would delay any action on CO2 emissions by years, while scientists insist that deep cuts are needed right now to prevent a climate catastrophe. China, in turn, is saying that any deal at Copenhagen must not penalise developing economies like its own.

Inadvertently, the Chinese have hit the nail on the head. There is a deepening global economic recession and each country is desperate to promote a “return to growth” (and profits). So Copenhagen will necessarily avoid any decisions that jeopardise this objective.

Yet it is precisely the grow-or-die nature of capitalism that is historically the principal cause of climate chaos. We don’t expect the leaders of world capitalism to accept that and create a sustainable, not-for-profit economy in place of the rapacious market-driven madness currently in place.

So now the search is on for “cheaper” so-called solutions to global warming. And rising to the top of the list is the old chestnut of “population control”. Put simply, the argument is that there are too many people on the planet and cutting their numbers would help in tackling climate change.

Heading the charge are bodies like the Optimum Population Trust, whose new report suggests that family planning is more “cost effective” because it is five times cheaper than low-carbon technologies in reducing carbon emissions. The US-based Worldwatch Institute is campaigning “to slow, and ultimately end, the unsustainable growth of world population - a critical force behind many of today's most serious problems”. Other organisations like People and Planet and the Green Party say more or less the same thing.

Of course, population growth is an issue. But is not the cause of the explosion in carbon emissions over the last 30 or so years. The problem is not population numbers themselves but land distribution and distribution of resources. People aren't hungry because the population of their country is too big. They are hungry because they are poor and can't afford food.

They are hungry because they are seen as sources of profits by the agri-corporations who control the production and supply of food, and who work with corrupt governments to plunder resources. Deforestation and over-fishing, for example, takes place for their benefit and not for the people in countries where population growth is fastest. This is the case in the criminal destruction of virgin forest to make disposable nappies or to grow palm oil plants so the advanced economies can fuel private cars.

In any case, the countries where population growth is slow, or even negative as in Germany and Italy, are the countries that use the majority of the world's resources. No one is suggestion reducing populations in these countries!

Advocates of population control pure and simple effectively hold human beings in general responsible for and identify them with an economic system over which they have no control whatsoever. They ignore completely the fact that it is unlimited growth in the drive for profit that is destroying the planet.

As for capitalist politicians heading for Copenhagen, bringing population numbers up the climate agenda helps them to sidestep the main issue – the need to make deep cuts in emissions immediately. They can simply blame the world’s population for the crisis!

There is a more sinister dimension to the question. In an economic crisis, where there is too much unusable labour power, there is always a reopening of the question of population growth. This is about capitalism not wanting to feed mouths that are not creating profit. The elimination of surplus people in the context of capitalist crisis like the one we're in now will take the form of famine, war and genocide.

Penny Cole and Paul Feldman

Double dealing on climate change

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon this week summonsed world leaders to attend an unprecedented second pre-meeting in New York in September to "galvanise political will" about "the defining issue of our time". He wants a deal on climate change on the table for the world summit in Copenhagen in December and his urgent intervention shows that prospects for an agreement remain weak.

No serious progress has been made in the negotiations up until now. This became clear at a meeting in Bonn this week called under the slogan “seal the deal”, where countries announced their “pledges” on reducing emissions. The European Union pledged a cut of 20 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020. Australia pledged 5-20 per cent from 2000 levels by 2020 and Canada pledged 20 per cent from 2006 levels by 2020. China has made no commitment but says it might if the US agrees to a 40% cut. Japan’s pledge of a 15% reduction by 2020 is the lowest so far, and could probably be met from the collapse of its economy alone.

Confused by all these figures? Don’t worry. All they mean is that it’s “business as usual” at the climate talks. Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the total reductions pledged (even if all countries stuck to their commitments, which is not certain) is not anywhere near enough to meet what the science says is required.

A new report on the human cost of climate change reveals that global warming is already responsible for 300,000 deaths a year and that by 2030, worldwide deaths will reach almost 500,000 per year. The number of people affected by climate change annually will to rise to over 600 million with a total annual economic cost of around $300 billion. But negotiators are as immune to these human tragedies as they are to the scientific evidence. They are engaged in the usual tricks and double dealing.

The newly-called UN meeting will follow a meeting of 17 key world leaders convened at the initiative of President Barack Obama, and that takes place immediately after the annual G8 summit in July. Never have so many capitalist political and business leaders come together so often, to achieve so little over such a long period of time. From Rio to Copenhagen by way of Kyoto, Johannesburg, the Stern Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and numerous other scientific discoveries along the way, nothing has changed.

If Copenhagen is, as scientists meeting earlier this year said, our last chance to act on climate change, then it’s all up with the human race. Fortunately, that is not the case. Climate change, caused by the totality of global economy and production for profit, requires a global solution of a revolutionary nature. Pressure groups, reports, marches and individual actions can’t do it. Having Greens inside the talks won’t do the trick.

There still time – and limitless space – for a different kind of politics to be brought into being. That is why A World to Win calls on everybody to join us, to support our Action Plan for the Eco-Crisis (and make suggestions to improve it in light of the latest developments) and organise around the People’s Charter for Democracy to create the kinds of powerful, eco-focused democratic structures that can act on climate change in a serious way.

Penny Cole
Environment editor