Climate change deniers trade in disinformation

A draft of the next major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been leaked on line by a small-time climate change denier, doubtless seeking to enter the big time.

Childishly grabbing one out-of-context sentence from the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), US Republican blogger Alec Rawls claims the report supports the idea that any warming is due to natural effects. A riot ensues on the internet, the major well-paid climate denial bloggers pitch in and Fox News is ecstatic.

Then Professor Steve Sherwood, one of the report's authors and director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, responds saying: "Oh that's completely ridiculous. I'm sure you could go and read those paragraphs yourself and the summary of it and see that we conclude exactly the opposite, that this cosmic ray effect that the paragraph is discussing appears to be negligible."

So I did, and here's AR5's actual conclusion: “The lack of trend in the cosmic ray intensity over the last 50 years provides another strong argument against the hypothesis of a major contribution of cosmic rays to on-going climate change."

So there you go – I have single-handedly refuted the key plank of climate denialology in one short hour – assisted, naturally, by every single respectable and qualified climate scientist in the world.

AR5 is a highly technical summary of all the current climate change science. That a minor right-wing blogger with no scientific qualifications was able to get the draft by signing himself up as one of 800 "expert reviewers" underlines just how flawed the review process is. Indeed our very own climate sceptic eccentric Lord Monckton (qualification: a degree in Classics from Cambridge University) is signed up as an expert reviewer.

Rawls has done us all a favour by publishing this draft before the reviewers get their hands on it. Whilst the IPCC can ignore low-level bloggers like Rawls and Monckton, the politically appointed big guns brought in by, for example, the US and Chinese governments will have plenty of influence.

AR4, the first global report to state that man-made climate change is an undeniable fact, was changed at review to say it was 90% certain. In fact the IPCC has been accused of frequently underestimating the speed of climate change, because including all respectable studies creates a certain levelling effect.

For example, the 2007 report concluded that Arctic sea ice would not completely melt until 2070 at the earliest though even there was plenty of evidence of a faster trajectory, which has proved right with ice-free summers likely by 2030.

Meanwhile more information emerges about shady corporate funding for climate change deniers. Documents leaked to Desmogblog expose the role of the Heartland Institute in channeling corporate cash to climate change deniers.

For example Fred Singer, a history professor at a Jesuit University who is notorious for his role in the Channel 4 documentary The Great Climate Change Swindle, gets $5,000 per month, plus expenses.

In Australia, Robert Carter gets $1,667 per month. He is a paleontology professor at the University of New South Wales, but also has time to work for Heartland AND be a Senior Policy Advisor at the Institute of Public Affairs, a right-wing free-market Australian think tank.

Craig Idso, another US blogger, writes for the Heartland-sponsored Nongovernmental  International Panel on Climate Change, a shadow organisation that exists solely to challenge IPCC reports. Idso is now researching carbon capture and storage. You could ask why, if emissions are not a problem? Still it is likely to be a lucrative new field with funding from the US coal industry.

In spite of modest salaries and constant departmental cuts, not one respectable climatologist has been bought into the ranks of the deniers. That tells us that money only buys distortion, misinformation and downright lies.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Food as a commodity sends a message

As two-thirds of the United States suffers from the largest drought to hit the country in 50 years, food crop prices rocket and speculation is rising on the financial markets.

Corn and soybeans, essential for feeding large swathes of the planet’s population, stand at record highs. Corn has jumped between 30 to 50 per cent and soybeans are up 60% since last December.

For investors in food as commodities, of course, it’s great news. The Fiscal Times, for example, put matters like this:

“Agricultural commodities have handily beaten most other asset classes so far this year as a place where investors have been able not only to generate positive returns but capture gains of 20 percent or more, depending on their ability to buy into the right contract at the right time, and roll that contract over when it approaches expiry".

Thus, big consumers of grain from Egypt and Morocco to South Korea and Taiwan are facing a renewed bout of food inflation as cash rich gamblers on the commodity exchanges drive food inflation far beyond the limits of supply and demand.

In fact, it seems that economic, social and political effects of the sharp rise in agricultural commodity prices have barely begun. And with the increased cost of food, memories of the world’s recent food crises abound.

In 2007-08 rapidly rising food prices triggered riots around the world. In 2011 wheat prices were a major factor in pushing Egypt’s masses onto the road to revolution.

This time around, in Indonesia, the tofu industry has threatened to strike over rising soyabean prices; in Mexico, the cost of corn tortillas is on the rise; and Iran last week witnessed a rare protest over the cost of chicken.

Now, sharply rising food prices are intensifying the already existing impact of austerity measures imposed by governments since 2008.  Austerity measures are of course part of the effort to pass the responsibility for debts accumulated in bailing out the banks onto already beleaguered populations.

The World Bank is one of many agencies of the global capitalist class that are worried. Africa is their last hope of a source of profitable growth for corporations in the deepening global depression.

“Certainly there is a lot of reason to worry’ says Mthuli Ncube, Chief Economist and Vice President of the African Development Bank (AfDB).

“It is a threat … if they (the food prices) keep rising, again we will have social upheaval that will threaten economic growth in Africa”

Another global food price spike will squeeze net food importers in Africa. It will combine with the euro zone crisis in Europe and the continuing slowdown in China’s growth to negatively impact African exporters of oil and other commodities.

But, naturally, the Bank’s first and only concern is to return to profitable growth – the self-vicious circle of profit-fuelled commodity production process that has culminated in the present crisis.

The ways in which abnormal weather conditions like the US drought interact with global warming and climate change is extremely complex. But even Brad Plummer of the mainstream Washington Post is now warning about the effects of climate change on US farmers.

He has concluded that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2012 report on extreme events, which brings together existing investigations, concluded that it was probable that droughts would “become more intense in many parts of the world if the planet keeps heating up — a trend that could disrupt the world’s food supply”.

The use of land and food production to generate profit and for speculation is fundamentally incompatible with feeding the world’s population.  Breaking the vicious circle between the corporate profit system, climate change and the threat of starvation for millions on the planet is most urgent.

A global network of People’s Assemblies can remove break the cycle by seizing control of the land, factories, offices and infrastructure and setting out on a path to sustainable production replacing the chase for profits with the interests of the planet and those who live on it.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

Time to sack the watchdog

Two advisors have resigned from the community group set up by the Independent Police Complaints Commission after the police killing of Mark Duggan in Tottenham last August.

The move marks a serious breakdown of relations between the black community and the body that is supposed to monitor police behaviour.

A statement by Stafford Scott reveals the IPCC’s complicity in a process of deliberate disinformation. Scott, who has engaged with the police since the Macpherson report, says that police removal of the vehicle that Duggan travelled in shortly before he was shot has so tainted the investigation that “we will never be able to have faith in their final report into the killing.”

Scott says the IPCC broke its own guidelines “by giving out erroneous information to journalists regarding the 'shoot-out' involving Mark Duggan and police that didn't actually happen.”

Both the Met and the IPCC are now threatening to report the Guardian to the Press Complaints Commission for stating that Mark Duggan was unarmed at the time he was shot by a police marksman.

Scott, who was an advisor to the Met, now believes the IPCC suffers worse flaws than the force it is investigating.”

But the police killing of Duggan is, human rights campaign group Black Mental Health UK, says, is not simply an isolated example of cover-ups. It forms part of a pattern and a “hidden history” of black people in Britain.

Matilda MacAttram, editor of the BMH’s Solution Magazine , told A World to Win that “a very important part of the black experience is marked by deaths in custody. This is something as live today in the recent cases of Kingsley Burrell-Brown and Mark Duggan as it was over 42 years ago when police hounded David Oluvale to death and threw him into a river.”

The second-ever edition of the on-line magazine, produced during Black History Month, has Oluwale and five other black men on its commemorative cover. Oluwale, Orville Blackwood, David Bennett, Mikey Powell, Sean Rigg, Kingsley Burrell-Brown - none of them over 40 years of age - all died in custody between 1969 and 2011.

“It is a pattern, which is the same whether or not you are a mental health user. The deaths of these men may not seem linked, but for their families, a fit and healthy man, their loved one, no longer exists,” MacAttram says.

The Solution Magazine highlights the long-term effect of deaths in custody or during police raids on the children left behind, by interviewing the sons of Orville Blackwood and Cherry Groce.

African Caribbeans are 50% more likely to enter the psychiatric health system, 44% are more likely to be sectioned, 29% more likely to be forcibly restrained, 50% more likely to be placed in seclusion. Detention rates for people from the UK African Caribbean community has doubled over 2005-2010 and over half the deaths of people in police custody are mental health users.

Stafford Scott and his fellow adviser John Noblemunn should be commended for refusing to serve on the community reference group set up by the IPCC. Scott has courageously broken the confidentiality agreement he signed when agreeing to serve on the group. He is now calling for “a body truly willing and able to investigate the police,” which he says, “is the only way to ensure that they will learn from their mistakes; and that, when mistakes occur, communities do not believe the one route to justice lies in taking matters into their own hands.”

But the lack of progress in the treatment of ethnic minority and black people in custody, whether directly by police or in mental health institutions, shows that existing institutions are far more than just flawed. It is a powerful argument for the disbanding not only of the IPCC, but of the police and the prison system and their replacement by bodies under the control of communities they are intended to serve.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Capitalism feeding off hunger

A capitalist perfect storm has ended all progress in reducing world hunger, and one billion people are now undernourished – 925 million more than before the economic crisis began. In every country, prices are soaring, including in the UK where food prices have risen by 22% in the last three years.

The crisis has been caused by the cumulative effects of:
• An expansion of commodity speculation in food products and land, including the poisonous hedgers and futures traders
• A year of extreme weather, from drought to floods
• Loss of agricultural land to bio-fuels, and urbanisation
• The collapse in purchasing power of the poorest people due to the economic slump.

Commodity speculators have moved strongly into food, betting on shortages and pushing up prices in a world where the food supply is increasingly globalised.

True, the wheat crop will be 30m tonnes lower than last year – a 5.5% decrease, due to drought in China, the heat wave in Russia and the floods in Pakistan. But stocks are not so low that prices could not be kept at a reasonable level. However that would assume a rational economic and trade system – and we are a million miles away from that. The market price of wheat and maize soared by 30% in just a few weeks.

In Russia, the price of buckwheat – a popular staple – has tripled. World meat prices – dependent on grain prices – are at a 20-year high. Egyptians can no longer afford their own basic diet of bread, cheese, tomatoes. Sugar and rice prices are at an all-time high.

According to the UN food price indicator (a figure based on a statistical analysis of 6 key commodities) prices have not reached the 2008 high of 199 – when there were food riots across the world – but they are heading in that direction at 188. The figure increased 14 points in 2010.

Governments across the world are preparing for social uprisings – already 12 people died last month in riots in Mozambique. But those same governments have facilitated the system that has led to the food crisis.

UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier de Schutter, says a combination of environmental degradation, urbanisation and large-scale land acquisitions by foreign investors for biofuels is squeezing land suitable for agriculture.

According to the World Bank, more than one-third of large-scale land acquisitions are intended to produce agro fuels. It is this loss of local agriculture that causes shortages – and not population increases.

Meeting in Rome, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation’s committee on world food security (CFS) established a panel of experts to look at the “causes and consequences of food price volatility, including market distorting practices and links to financial markets, and appropriate and coherent policies, actions, tools and institutions to manage the risks linked to excessive price volatility in agriculture."

This panel will have as much success in changing the system as the International Panel on Climate Change has had in persuading governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; or experts working with the Convention on Bio-diversity have had in stopping the corporations destroying the planet’s eco-system.

The unsustainability of capitalism itself is the real problem, and the food crisis is a systemic, not a sporadic crisis. If we allow a system driven by profit and speculation to keep control of the world’s land use and agriculture, we will face famine on a scale not seen before.

Rioting and looting could well result as food prices rise out of reach. But these are not solutions. The real need is for a transformation in the ownership of land, the way food markets operate, the development of local food and the sharing of expertise and knowledge in a not-for-profit framework. That means grasping the opportunities offered by capitalist crisis to go beyond protest to democratising ownership, production and the political system itself.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

A law unto themselves

The decision not to bring charges in relation to the death of Ian Tomlinson following his beating by the police at the G20 demonstration on April 1, 2009 is truly shocking. But it should not be surprising.

There will be many who agree with the family's suspicion that there was a co-ordinated effort to conceal events surrounding Tomlinson's death. Others are asking whether there’s been a state conspiracy to protect the Met’s notorious Territorial Support Group (TSG).

According to The Guardian, the Independent Police Complaints Commission concluded there was sufficient evidence to charge the officer involved with manslaughter, and told Tomlinson's family so.

PC Simon Harwood, who is shown on video footage assaulting Tomlinson, is a member of the TSG. He was investigated twice over his alleged aggressive behaviour before joining the TSG, which is the Met’s mobile riot squad. Just after the G20, it was revealed that a third of the unit’s officers had been investigated for misconduct in the previous 12 months.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announcement of the main reason given for the long-delayed decision not to prosecute was the “irreconcilable conflict between Dr Patel on the one hand and the other experts on the other as to the cause of death”.

Patel is under investigation by the General Medical Council (GMC). As a Home Office registered forensic pathologist he performed autopsies in a number of contentious cases including some involving deaths in police custody, before he was suspended.

Dr Freddy Patel was the first of three pathologists who carried out post mortems, and he concluded that Tomlinson died of a heart attack. But he failed to keep even a sample of the key evidence – 3 litres of fluid found in Tomlinson’s abdomen.

Can it be a coincidence that the CPS decision was made public on the very day that the second pathologist, Dr Nat Cary, was giving evidence to the GMC, before any conclusion could be drawn about Patel’s competence? Or are their other forces at work in the background?

Cary said his report contained clear evidence that Tomlinson suffered injuries sufficient to support an actual bodily harm charge. The CPS dismissed the injuries as "relatively minor" and thus not enough to support a charge.

Speaking for the first time about the case, Cary said yesterday: "I'm quite happy to challenge that. The injuries were not relatively minor. He sustained quite a large area of bruising. Such injuries are consistent with a baton strike, which could amount to ABH. It's extraordinary. If that's not ABH I would like to know what is."

That the announcement coincided with the anniversary of the police killing – rather execution – of Jean Paul de Menezes in 2005 could be considered cruelly provocative. Apparently the CPS lawyer who made the decision was the same one who decided no officer should face charges over Menezes.

Deborah Coles of the Inquest charity said: "The eyes of the world will be looking on with incredulity as yet again a police officer is not facing any criminal charges after what is one of the most clear-cut and graphic examples of police violence that has led to death. This decision is a shameful indictment of the way police criminality is investigated."

Following Tomlinson’s death at the G20 summit it emerged that the police were under orders to deal harshly with the protestors, and there was a flurry of concern and promises to soften their tactics. Don’t count on it. The state is gearing up to deal with the mounting opposition to the gung-ho slash and burn tactics being pursued by the Cameron-Clegg regime.

The Coalition can’t tolerate anything that might stand in its way as it attempts to rebuild the profit system through the destruction of jobs, pensions, services and living standards. “Tough decisions” will require brutal action, and neither they nor the police will be held accountable. Both are a law unto themselves.

Gerry Gold

Scientists made scapegoats for climate change

Reading the blast of outraged hot air in the media about a flawed figure relating to Himalayan glaciers found in a 2007 summary report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), people might be starting to feel a little uneasy about the science of global warming.

So just to get back to reality, the World Glacier Monitoring Service, which has been measuring 90 glaciers in mountain ranges across the world continuously since the 1980s, has just published figures for 2007/08. These were compiled from satellite images and in-situ measurements of glaciers across the globe.

They found that “the average mass balance of the glaciers with available long-term observation series around the world continues to decrease” and that “the new data continues the global trend in strong ice loss over the past few decades”.

These, plus hundreds of other findings allowed the IPCC to recognise the flawed figure but at the same time restate: “Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century, reducing water availability, hydropower potential, and changing seasonality of flows in regions supplied by melt water from major mountain ranges (e.g. Hindu-Kush, Himalaya, Andes), where more than one-sixth of the world population currently lives.”

Yet the backlash against science and scientists continues. Yesterday the Information Commissioner accused the University of East Anglia of “crimes” under the Freedom of Information Act, piling more pressure on scientists embroiled in the leaked emails teacup tempest. And a couple of weeks ago scientists (and meteorologists) were forced to explain that a few days of heavy snow does not “disprove” the reality of global warming.

Climate change deniers virtually write as if the scientists themselves are working towards global warming – that global warming is being created out of the science itself. In capitalist society there are two common perspectives on how nature works. One is “teleological”, that is the religious or quasi-religious view that nature is working towards a specific outcome. Or there is the metaphysical, or post-modern view which would argue that there is no purpose or grand narrative in nature – stuff just happens.

There is a very different perspective – a dialectical perspective, which does not artificially separate “cause” and “effect”, but views them as interacting and contradictory opposites. Karl Marx, a key proponent of the dialectical approach, was a big fan of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species not only because it clarified much about the development of humans in nature, but also because Darwin had dealt teleology in science “a mortal blow”.

About dialectics Marx wrote that it “includes in its comprehension an affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up.” It is this unavoidable breaking up of the present state of things that the climate change deniers and their corporate and political sponsors cannot countenance, even if it is heralded by a disintegration of the polar ice cap.

The dialectical method, beloved of eminent scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin, can be of huge assistance to climate scientists in grasping the complex interaction between their work on the crisis of global warming, and the crises of economy and politics which are not parallel, but intimately interacting processes taking place in nature.

There is an actual political conflict going on here and scientists are increasingly finding it impossible to stand aloof from it. And of course it is a life and death struggle for all of us, as the reactionary backlash against action to reduce emissions gathers pace in the United States and elsewhere.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

'The world is still being cooked'

A survey of top climate scientists published by Oxfam to try and influence the leaders of the G8 economic powers, says that 2 degrees of global warming, now considered economically acceptable and inevitable by the governments of the rich countries, would wreck the lives of 660 million people.

Poor people living in low-lying coastal areas, island atolls and river deltas, and farmers, are most at risk of flooding and prolonged drought. The scientists, all contributors to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), named South Asia and Africa as the areas that will be most subject to the effects of climate change.

Professor Diana Liverman, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee advising the US government, said: ”If we do not make deep cuts in emissions now the changing climate will bring heat stress, sea level rise and more extreme drought and floods. Scientific observations tell us that the world is already warming and it appears that many of the most vulnerable people are starting to experience the impacts of climate change.” Oxfam’s report sets out some changes happening now:

HUNGER: Interviews with farmers in 15 countries reveal how once distinct seasons are shifting and rains are disappearing. Farmers from Bangladesh to Uganda and Nicaragua are facing failed harvest after failed harvest.

AGRICULTURE: Rice and maize, crops on which hundreds of millions depend, particularly in Asia, the Americas and Africa, are already suffering significant drops in yields. Maize yields will drop by 15 per cent or more by 2020.

HEALTH: Diseases such as malaria and dengue fever are appearing in areas where populations lack immunity or the healthcare infrastructure to cope with them. It is estimated that climate change has contributed to an average of 150,000 more deaths from disease per year since the 1970s, with over half of those in Asia.

WORK: Rising temperatures will make it impossible for people to work at the same rate on hot summer days without ruining their health. This will affect day and hourly-paid workers most and reduce productivity.

WATER: Major cities dependent on glacier run off, including Kathmandu and La Paz, may soon be unable to function.

DISASTERS: Extreme weather events including hurricanes, fires and storms could triple by 2030. A record $165 billion was lost in the 2005 hurricane season – and poor people have no insurance.

DISPLACEMENT: An estimated 26 million people have been displaced by climate change, mainly by extreme weather and drought. Each year there are a million more. Rising sea levels have already forced out island communities from Vanuatu, Tuvalu and the Bay of Bengal.

But the G8 leaders who met in Italy earlier this month were immune to these facts – the gulf between the science and the real world, and the fantasy finance world of global capital, is wider than ever.

After the summit Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director, Oxfam International saw no results: “For Obama it was ‘yes we can’, for Berlusconi’s G8 it’s ‘no we won’t’. This summit has been a shambles, it did nothing for Africa, and the world is still being cooked. Canada 2010 is the end of the road for the G8 - all the promises they have made are due. They have 12 short months to avoid being remembered as the ones who let the poor and the planet die.”

Capitalism as a system is not opposed in principle to allowing people to die in order to sustain its own continuing existence, whether by war, hunger or genocide. As writer Naomi Klein said in a recent speech: “Capitalism can survive this crisis. But the world can't survive another capitalist comeback.”

Penny Cole
Environment editor

The roulette wheel of climate change

New projections from the most respected climate modeling methodology suggest that without rapid and massive action, global warming will be twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago – and possibly even worse.

The study uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a computer simulation developed by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and supported by the US government.

It is the only model that interactively includes not only information about atmospheric, oceanic and biological systems, but also detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities - such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries.

The new projections suggest a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees. This can be compared to a median projected increase in the 2003 study of just 2.4 degrees.
Amongst the 400 complex projections that take into account diverse scenarios, in particular those where there is no political action to reduce emissions, look much worse than before.

To illustrate the range of probabilities revealed by the 400 simulations, the team at MIT produced a "roulette wheel" (see this page) that reflects the latest relative odds of various levels of temperature rise. The wheel provides a very graphic representation of just how serious the potential climate impacts are.

The team explain that their computer models match the known conditions, processes and past history of the relevant human and natural systems, and the researchers are therefore dependent on the accuracy of this current knowledge. They warn that the odds indicated may actually understate the problem, because the model does not fully incorporate positive feedbacks that can occur, for example, if increased temperatures caused a large-scale melting of permafrost.

Study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint Program and director of MIT's Center for Global Change Science, insisted: "The least-cost option to lower the risk is to start now and steadily transform the global energy system over the coming decades to low or zero greenhouse gas-emitting technologies."
Unfortunately, science does not drive global decision-making. The terrible drama of human society is that we are capable of producing scientists who can explain exactly what is happening, but not so far, the social and political structures – in a word, states – that will act on this information. Quite the reverse - as the body of evidence grows, state action to reduce emissions is actually declining.

That is because states do not stand even-handedly above society, doing the best for all. They represent the interests of one class – the capitalist class – and everything is made subservient to that – even at the risk of human and ecological catastrophe, as set out in the evidence published by the International Panel on Climate Change.

The only way to resolve this problem is for the governance of countries to undergo a democratic revolution, bringing into being new structures that serve the interests of the majority. Market expediency would no longer rule and scientific evidence could be taken seriously and acted upon.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Image courtesy / MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change

Adapt to climate change - on our terms

Climate scientists have called an emergency meeting in Copenhagen next week to demand that world leaders take immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to start preparing society for the impact of climate change. As Australia counts the terrible cost of bush fires, and wheat prices soar in China due to prolonged drought in grain growing regions, the results of climate change are already apparent.

Scientists will update the 2007 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report to reflect the speed-up in the melting of ice caps, and the inability of oceans to absorb any more CO2. They will say that a 2ºC increase in global temperature is probably no longer avoidable, and former head of the IPCC Bob Watson argues they should prepare for an average rise of 4ºC.

Some might be taking comfort that the slump in production arising from the global economic crisis will solve the problem. Japan says it will produce 50 million tonnes less CO2 this year as output collapses, for example. But as emissions from industry reduce, other sources are increasing. More widespread forest fires, a switch to cheaper, dirtier forms of energy and an end to investment in alternative energy projects – all of these will keep emissions high. The greenhouse effect itself, fuelled by the carbon already in the atmosphere, will not go away – winter ice will go on receding and tundra’s will go on melting, releasing formerly trapped CO2.

Market-driven measures, which are the only international political response so far, have also fallen apart. Carbon credits, for example, have lost two-thirds of their value in the last six months and the slide continues. Now that the market has failed, the next big thing is techno-fixes. The Obama presidency is investing in hydrogen-fuelled cars and bio-mass fuel from cellulose – processes that use more fuel than they create.

More bizarre ideas are out there. Two newly-formed corporations plan experimental dumping of iron filings or urea into the oceans. They want to grow a carpet of plankton that will hold carbon deep in the oceans for ever. The fact that governments have not banned these reckless experiments with the ocean eco-system is proof of how supine they are.

A new report from Corporate Watch looks in details at all the techno-fixes being considered and concludes that the only technologies likely to be delivered by the system are technologies that support the system.

Adaptation to climate change must not be a taboo subject. We need serious measures such as drought-resistant varieties of grains; plans to reduce the salination of fresh water at the mouths of deltas, strategies for big movements of populations and so on. But if we leave this adaptation in the hands of the existing power structures, all we will get is further profit-driven experimentation with the planet’s eco-systems.

In terms of climate change, as with the banking system, the politicians will go on trying to sustain the unsustainable! We must remove their decision-making power to unite scientists with society in a democratic partnership. In this way we can first cut emissions by changing the way goods and energy are produced. And then, since we will have to live with the effects of the reckless capitalist experiment for many hundreds of years, we can plan to adapt in ways that reflect the needs of people, not profit.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Nature hits back

Hundreds of people in Haiti and the Caribbean are dead, the whole of Cuba has been battered. Millions in the United States have been forced to flee the coastal areas of the Gulf of Mexico, with hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed.

These are the devastating effects of a series of hurricanes and tropical storms from Fay, to Gustav, Hanna and Ike. More and worse weather conditions are to be expected worldwide as the planet warms up. Floods in the Indian state of Bihar and, on a much smaller scale in Britain, are just two more examples of the power of nature disturbed by four decades of the rampant, wasteful and destructive growth of capitalist transnational corporations.

As Hurricane Ike was approaching Cuba, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the consensus of the world’s scientists, which showed in 2007 that global warming was the consequence of industrialisation, was proposing a quick fix to reduce carbon emissions.

In common with other campaigners he is advising us to eat less meat. According to the Worldwatch Institute 'The human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future: deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilisation of communities and the spread of disease.'

But, in an ironic reciprocal action in which nature appears to be biting back at the real source of the problem, the hurricanes have again forced the closure of the Mexican Gulf platforms which produce a quarter of US domestic oil.

It was the rapid credit-induced corporate growth that saw energy consumption soar in the latter part of the 20th century. This same drive for economic growth fostered increased population, an orgy of over-consumption, and, for some, the income which began to transform dietary habits.

So why does Dr Pachauri, like Al Gore, his Nobel Prize co-winner, focus on putting the blame on consumers when we should be tackling the real source of the problem?Could it be anything to do with his previous jobs? Here are just three of them: he was on the Board of Directors of the Indian Oil Corporation (January 1999 to September 2003); Board of Directors of GAIL (India) Ltd (April 2003 to October 2004); National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd (August 2002 to August 2005).

Indian Oil Corporation is a public-sector petroleum company. It is India’s largest commercial enterprise, ranking 116th on the Fortune Global 500 listing (2008).

GAIL (India) Limited, is India's largest natural gas transportation company, integrating all aspects of the natural gas value chain. GAIL is listed by Forbes as one of the world's 2,000 largest public companies in 2007.

National Thermal Power Corporation is the largest power generation company in India. Forbes Global 2000 for 2008 ranked it 411th in the world. It is an Indian public sector company listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. The Government of India holds 89.5% of its equity. The Company’s name has been changed to "NTPC Limited" with effect from October 28, 2005. The primary reason for this is the company's foray into hydro and nuclear based power generation – and coal mining.

He certainly knows about energy. He may or may not have shares in these companies, but putting Dr Pachauri in charge of the IPCC looks a bit like using a fox to guard the chickens. Gordon Brown has a similar idea - asking the highly profitable energy companies to help the old folk out with a bit of insulation. Crazy, but true.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor

Climate change hits water cycle

Global warming has already brought about significant changes to what is known as the hydrological cycle, warns an authoritative new report on climate change and water. The International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) stark assessment comes as the major economic powers refuse to take action to cut carbon emissions and, in Britain’s case, are actually allowing them to rise.

In the hydrological cycle, water evaporates from the seas, falls as fresh water rain, and is stored in different forms – as ice (not so much), in underground aquifers, human-made reservoirs, or flows back to the sea. The IPCC says that changes to this cycle include new rainfall patterns – at both extremes, with increases in northern latitudes and decreases in the south - reduced snow cover and melting ice; and changes in soil moisture and runoff.

Climate scientists agree that this pattern will continue. Low-lying areas in northern Europe will become more subject to flooding, and semi-arid areas, such as the Mediterranean basin, western USA, southern Africa and north-eastern Brazil will lose water resources. The new report warns: “By the 2050s, the area of land subject to water stress due to climate change is projected to be more than double that with decreasing water stress.” In many regions, any increase in supply will be “counterbalanced by the negative effects of increased precipitation variability and seasonal runoff shifts on water supply, water quality and flood risks”. The IPCC that these changes are certain to affect food availability in many areas.

Former Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson, speaking on Radio 4 this week about his new book which rubbishes climate science (I won’t bother you with the title – it’s completely bonkers and you’d get more useful knowledge from his previous book about how to lose weight!) said that the science is one thing but the real challenge is what we do about it. Human beings, he argued, are infinitely adaptable and resourceful, and will find ways to cope with climate change – and even turn it to their advantage, he suggested.

This argument is the basis of thinking of all governments – even those who accept the science of climate change – and the reason why technical fixes, military planning and profitable market solutions such as carbon trading and bio-fuel, form their response to the climate crisis, rather than action to halt the growth in emissions. But what Lawson and his co-thinkers like George W Bush and Tony Blair (impossible to say what goes on in the strange brain of Gordon Brown) do not articulate is that human resourcefulness takes many different forms.

At times humans co-operate in structured and rational ways – the IPCC itself is an example of this. Sometimes they are organised into ruthless armies, to oppress others. Sometimes they work together to help each other and sometimes they let the weakest go to the wall whilst the rich and powerful survive. In the macro scale, what form actually prevails depends entirely on social and economic circumstances, and the nature of the states that determine the laws within which people act.

This is why, within our existing capitalist framework, millions of householders are losing their homes in the US, whilst fund managers rake in big bonuses. Why British soldiers invaded Iraq though the majority opposed it. Why many of the 70,000 small UK businesses flooded last year now find they can’t afford insurance. Why millions are spent maintaining the Thames barrier, whilst for the Norfolk and Dorset coastline and other less valuable real estate – the watchwords are “adaptive management” and “planned withdrawal”. Why people across the globe are protesting against food price rises, while Lawson tells the rich how to get thinner. And why the developed economies are passing the buck on carbon emissions, making a new international agreement much less likely.

The IPCC report confirms that an entirely new set of social, economic and political conditions are needed to push through both an emergency response and a longer-term plan to tackle climate change.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Carbon emissions deadline looms

Carbon emissions have to peak before 2015 to have any impact on climate change, according to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting in Bangkok this week, where it discussed mitigation measures. It would take a reduction in average annual growth rates of less than 0.12%, to achieve this target, the IPCC report claims.

This relatively modest cost compares to the 2006 Stern Report for the British government, which stated that with “business as usual”, climate change would reduce welfare by the equivalent of a reduction in consumption of between 5% and 20% per head.

But the IPCC warns that “delayed emissions’ reductions lead to investments that lock in more emissions-intensive infrastructure and development pathways”. So the question is, can the global capitalist system change course in the next seven years? The signs are not promising.

About 50% of the total mitigation required could be achieved by reducing emissions from deforestation. But in September 2007, the Philippines’ government signed an agreement with China to develop 400,000 to 500,000 hectares of “idle, alienable and disposable lands and forest lands”. In other words they plan to grub up crucial areas of biodiversity and carbon sinks for agribusiness.

And a recent UN study found that virtually all the forests in Ethiopia have gone. A hundred years ago 40% of the country was tree-covered; today less than 3%. This is an environmental disaster in a country which was once one of nature’s most crucial areas of bio-diversity.

The report sets out a range of energy options to increase end-use efficiency as the best way of reducing demand. But the supply side is still the focus of global governments. The UK government is seriously considering an expansion of coal-fired power stations and China is opening new coal-fired power stations at the rate of two a week.

And this brings us to a paragraph which is in the main body of the IPCC report, but left out of the summary for policymakers, which makes clear what governments actually need to do.

“For low and medium stabilisation levels, developed countries as a group would need to reduce their emissions below 1990 levels in 2020 (on the order of -10% to -40% below 1990 levels for most of the considered regimes) and to still lower levels by 2050 (40% to 95% below 1990 levels), even if developing countries make substantial reductions.

“Under most of the considered regime designs for low and medium stabilization levels, developing country emissions need to deviate from what we believe today would be their baseline emissions as soon as possible, even if developed countries make substantial reductions.”

In other words, the argument that China and India must be permitted to go on polluting until they reach the same level of capitalist economic development as the developed countries simply does not hold water. Of course, some argue that this a kind of “justice”. But that assumes that there is some benefit is to be gained for the mass of people in developing countries from unfettered globalised profit-driven development, when the truth is quite the opposite. Rising food prices, drought, floods and pollution affect the poorest people first.

It is increasingly clear that the best way to mitigate the impact of global capitalism is to remove its power to continue on its current path. What the developing world actually needs is an opportunity to leapfrog this stage of development and move straight to a cleaner, more sustainable and humane economic model. And there is some justice in the argument that it is a duty of us, in the developed countries, to lead a struggle to achieve that.


Penny Cole
Environment editor

Climate report passes the buck

Even vetting by the US government could not prevent the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from opening its synthesis report with the stark statement that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal". The United Nations agency has, however, once again passed on identifying the main cause and fails to come up with any solutions to climate change that might challenge the status quo.

A jump in GHG emissions has not only resulted in rising temperatures but also been responsible for the increasing number of heat waves (such as the one that caused the deaths of thousands in France in 2003) and droughts (currently causing major problems even in developed countries like Australia and in Tennessee in the United States). Rising emissions are also behind rising sea levels and has affected tropical storm systems (the cyclone which hit Bangladesh last week claimed over 10,000 lives).

IPCC scientists also warn that the consequences of allowing temperatures to rise un-checked could expose up to 250 million people to increased water stress in Africa alone, where rain-fed agriculture yields could be halved. The synthesis report admits that GHG emissions will continue to rise even with current "climate change mitigation policies" and "sustainable practices". These could result in changes to climate systems even greater than already experienced and could lead to abrupt or irreversible impacts (such as oceans rising several metres if polar ice sheets are lost). Up to a third of all the planet's animals and plants face extinction as temperatures rise.

While the IPCC report admits that adaptive capacity is unevenly distributed both "across and within societies", a recent Christian Aid report, Truly Inconvenient: Tackling poverty & climate change at once shows that for millions of the world's poor “safe” levels of climate change have already been exceeded. Christian Aid rightly points out that "industrialised nations" (aka global capitalism) have been responsible for causing the climate crisis and it is they who should start to put it right. It even recognises the need for a debate about the "very nature of development".

The IPCC report does confirm that global warming is due to the increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions arising from the activities of the society we live in and that these have increased by 70% since 1970. As this is the period that has seen the rapid growth of global capitalism, it appears to leave little room for argument as to the real culprit for the climate crisis we are facing.


Yet the solutions proposed by the synthesis report, however, are firmly wedded to the status quo. The only “solutions” are market-led, with the IPCC seeing "substantial economic potential for the mitigation of global GHG emissions". It still supports the use of nuclear power for generating energy and biofuels for transport despite the dangers of radioactive pollution and increasing food prices for the world’s poor from farmers diverting to more profitable biofuel crops. The IPCC still sees industries trading in carbon as "an effective carbon-price signal” which could “realise significant mitigation potential”.

What the report fails to recognise that to truly tackle this crisis, a fundamental change in how society is organised will be needed. This is the very question that Running a Temperature addresses published by AWTW addresses, providing a clear and alternative framework for dealing with the climate crisis beyond capitalism.

Stuart Barlow

Empty gestures in the face of climate change

Latest warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show the extent of damage already done to our planet through the excesses of global capitalism. The IPCC have confirmed that it is now very unlikely (which means they are 90% certain) that the rise in average global temperatures can be kept below 2⁰C. If temperatures rise by more than 2⁰C we will hit the threshold when catastrophic climate change starts to kick in, with millions facing the dangers of drought, hunger and flooding. This is the shocking point we have reached and yet the major economic powers continue to squabble about a few targets as if there was plenty of time to play around with.

The IPCC’s warning only highlight New Labour’s puerile gestures of trying to make people think they are doing something when all along their market-state policies promote greater commodification to open up new opportunities for profit at the expense of the environment. This is typified by Gordon Brown’s recent announcement at New Labour’s sad excuse of a conference to “make Britain a world leader in tackling climate change”.

The implications of this support for global capitalism can be seen in the New Economics Foundation’s Chinadependence: The second UK interdependence report, which shows the UK second only to the United States in the consumption of natural resources and goods. Not only does it repeat the well-know fact that if everyone consumed resources at the rate of the United States we would need five planets to support this, it also implies (without using the actual words) that global capitalism’s unrestrained drive for growth is responsible for accelerated climate change.

This is indelibly linked to the corporations moving production to countries like China as they are motivated to cut production costs and increase profits (by extracting greater surplus value from a cheaper workforce). This is driving China’s growth in carbon emissions, although its per capita emissions are still well below those of Europe. But with one coal-fired power station opening each week, China will soon catch up and overtake the rest of the world.

Expert/pundit Jonathon Porritt (chair of the government’s own Sustainability Development Commission) seems happy to criticise Brown and his glove-puppet Chancellor Alistair Darling’s pre-budget statement as “crabby incrementalism”. Darling announced small changes in climate taxes and an “environmental transformation fund”. But what Porritt - a great believer that capitalism can provide a future of wealth, equity and ecological integrity - doesn’t want to acknowledge is that these proposals reflect what’s in the Climate Change Bill – hot air plus smoke and mirrors!

In Running a Temperature: an action plan for the eco-crisis, A World to Win shows that capitalism and climate change are inextricably linked and provides a clear and alternative framework for human existence beyond capitalism. To meet the deadlock we find ourselves in we need to move on in history, from a globalised world capitalist system, to a concept of local stewardship acting in a not-for-profit way in the interests of global society.

Stuart Barlow

Liberating science from profit

The warning today in the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that global temperatures could rise by as much as 6.4C by 2100 has one simple implication: immediate, drastic action is needed to reduce CO2 emissions by 90%. Even the IPCC’s more conservative estimate of temperature rises of between 1.8-4C will lead to higher sea levels and more frequent extreme weather, affecting the lives of everyone on the planet. Basically, the planet’s ability to absorb CO2 is being undermined and the IPCC is 90% sure this is a result of “human activity” (or more precisely, the burning of the fossil fuels that drive the capitalist economy). So what has been the reaction of governments? At the meeting in Paris this week to finalise the IPCC report, government-appointed scientists from China and the US lobbied to reduce its impact. Their great achievement was that 10% of doubt. Even in the face of undeniable evidence pouring in daily from every climate research institute on the planet, attempts to pressure scientists mounts. A hearing of the US Congress this week heard that climate scientists working for US government agencies have been pressured not to use the words "global warming" or "climate change". Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded think tank with close links to the Bush administration, for articles undermining the IPCC report. And the reason for this desperation to find scientists – any scientists – who will support the case for doing nothing? This week Exxon, the world's largest oil company, announced profits of $39.5bn (£20bn) for 2006 - the highest-ever profit reported by an American company.

The major capitalist states will rely on market measures and untried technology when it comes to climate change. Nothing will be allowed to disrupt the global economy. For example, in his recent State of the Union address, Bush spoke of cars powered by hydrogen or bio-fuels. But the power used to make the hydrogen would give off more emissions than it would save, and to produce enough bio-fuels would demand that the whole of the Amazon rain forest be felled to plant palms! In Britain, New Labour favours an expansion of the carbon trading market, discredited carbon offsets and charges that airlines and passengers will absorb. Meanwhile, Stansted airport is to be expanded. Scientists have some positive ideas to reverse the damage caused by climate change such as carbon capture, carbon scrubbers, carbon sinks and some of the concepts for reflecting sunlight away from the atmosphere. But while science remains subordinate to the profit needs of global corporations and sponsored governments, under-researched actions could cause further damage to the eco-system while leaving the fundamentals unchanged. As Running a Temperature – an action plan for the eco-crisis, also published this week, explains: “In its vulgar pursuit of profit, capitalism separates us from our own nature, from the very source of the basics of food, air, shelter and clothing. It takes profound scientific accomplishments and our every-increasing knowledge of nature and perverts them in the name of market economics.” The authors argue against the idea that one-off market initiatives can solve the crisis and it calls for the liberation of science from the profit system, to support humanity in solving the climate crisis: “Science has explained global warming and will enable us to start restoring the damage done to the planet. In a networked world, sharing knowledge at the highest level, we can monitor more closely our impact on the eco-system and plan production and the development of society to ensure that bio-systems benefit from our actions.” Running a Temperature sets out detailed, immediate and long-term action plans that would halt climate chaos and makes the case for a revolutionary break with the old order for them to work. The IPCC report, which is the result of the work of 2,500 scientists, confirms that nothing less will do.

Penny Cole, co-author Running a Temperature