Response to flooding shows the system isn't working

The current weather crisis has shown up the illegitimacy of politicians in charge of a system that is unable and unwilling to act for the common good. They greatly fear this exposure – it's the reason for the tide of government rhetoric about "money no object" and promises of future help.

In 2010, government chief scientist Sir David King warned of the need to plan for increased floods resulting from climate change. He proposed pulling flood defences inland, sacrificing some areas to the sea, establishing flood plains at the heads of rivers, modernising weirs, widening bridges and replacing sewers to separate sewage and floodwater.

This is the current policy of the Environment Agency and it has a backlog of hundreds of measures based on this approach. It can't complete them because of cuts and a Treasury rule that they can't invest more than £400,000 in any one project. The government's fantasy was that business and the insurance industry would step up as co-funders. As a result, of course, nothing happened.

The Met Office explains that the storms have their source in south-east Asia, where warming seas are evaporating huge quantities of water into the atmosphere. This caused a weather "chain reaction" which disrupted the Pacific jet stream, diverting it over north America and causing the extremely cold conditions there. This in turn affected the Atlantic jet stream, which moved more and more rapidly, bringing storm after storm to Britain and Ireland.

But Lord Lawson, former Tory Chancellor, knows better. He berated the Met Office for suggesting climate change could be involved. Instead, the floods should spur the government to stop spending untold millions littering the countryside with pylons and solar panels. This at a time when 80,000 homes are without power and probably the only  people with electricity are those with their own solar panels or turbines!

But it isn't just the Tory fringe who deny climate change as energy and climate change Secretary Ed Davey suggests in a speech today. Cabinet member and environment secretary Owen Paterson thinks climate change has been happening for centuries and is great because farmers will get longer growing seasons! Transport secretary Philip Hammond yesterday blamed "natural solar rhythms” for the weather. Help, we’ve been transported back to the Middle Ages!

David Cameron only “very much suspects” that the flooding is linked to climate change. He is running scared of the lunatics in his own party and Ukip (remember the Ukip councillor who said the floods were God’s retribution after the passing of the gay marriage law?) His chancellor is not a denier, he's a couldn't-care-lesser, a fossil-fuel profit freak, whose response to soaring energy costs was to let the Big Six drop spending on energy saving or renewables.

The ConDems want the UK fracked to bits and Somerset – which is largely under water - is one of the areas earmarked. You don't have to imagine the effect on water quality of flooded wells and waste water ponds. It happened in Colorado last year – as the headline here says: "Flooding and Fracking - a double disaster".

When King published his report he thought the floods would come in the 2030s at the earliest, and yet here's the wild weather, two decades early, and not only in Britain but across the world. Capitalist states thought they could treat climate change like they do the electorate – blandish, fool and bully people, whilst permitting corporate business as usual. 

The only issue now is whether we are prepared to permit them to go on down this road. There is nothing in it for us to maintain the status quo. Politicians of any political stripe wading about flooded towns won't help us.

We are on our own here, and so we should put all the resources at our disposal under democratic local control and start acting co-operatively to prepare for what is ahead, including halting any plans to increase fossil fuel burning.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Memo to Cameron: Floods are actually in charge of us

There had to be a moment when a changed climate resulting from global warming caused persistent extreme weather. With horrific storms and floods in Britain and France, the worst drought in California since records began and temperatures over 40º in Australia, that moment has arrived.

David Cameron is now "in charge of the floods" – but in reality the floods are in charge of us.  

Thousands of people are without power, roads are impassable, the sea is encroaching into town centres and breaking down sea walls. Some villages have been cut off for weeks, all normal life put on hold. Yesterday police helicopters cruised the Somerset levels, warning people to leave their homes.

Cameron announced the ConDem government will contribute an extra £100m (literally a drop in the ocean) and stated "there is no limit to what this government will do - whether it is dredging the rivers Tone and Parrett (on the Somerset levels), whether it is support for our emergency services, whether it is fresh money for flood defences, whether it is action across the board, this Government will help those families and get this issue sorted".

But it can't be "sorted" in that sense. Quick fixes are of no use here.

In the medium term, Devon and Cornwall are going to be cut out of the rail network for as long as six months and probably longer if it proves unrealistic to rebuild along the coastal route.

In the longer term, there will be a massive speed up of coastal erosion. We have seen the beginnings of that this month. Villages that have existed since medieval times may become uninhabitable.

Dredging the Somerset levels is a disastrous idea. It will force streams and rivers into unnatural gorges, where water will rush towards the sea, spilling over every time it hits a pinch point - say a bridge. Villages and farms on the levels will see a slight diminution of floods but the water will burst river banks in towns like Taunton.

There is another way, which is to accept that during winter storms some farm land will be flooded. Adding huge quantities of organic matter to the fields - that is compost - would ensure they hold the water and drain well when the storms end. This would mean turning away from chemical farming.

We need to create open space in towns and cities. We need to stop building on flood plains and where have already done it, take urgent measures to improve drainage. The environment agency wants to regulate so new housing developments must be built with a soak-away - open land to hold excess water when rainfall is too much for sewer drains. But the construction industry opposes this simple measure, because they would not be able to crush quite so many homes on to every site.

The system of capitalist economy privileges private ownership and profit above all other considerations, and our market state governments have become simply another facet of this whole. The idea the state should pay for infrastructure has been rubbished for decades. The days when they could act in opposition to business interests in the public interest have long gone.

Climate change will increasingly create chaotic social conditions and we know that governments' first response to disorder is generally to crack down on the population. But they can't crack down on the weather - it's bigger than all of us.

It has become clear during the floods that people have had to rely on their own resilience and social solidarity to get through. A hands-off state has proved incompetent and unable to prepare for what was on the cards. This is true on a regional, national and global scale as well.

The lessons are pretty stark. Society’s resources have to be marshalled in a co-operative and democratic way so we can decide how best to respond to extreme weather, which is here to stay. Weather is now first and foremost a political question of power. At the moment, it’s in the hands of incompetent politicians and their developer friends. That's what has to change.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Protection from extreme weather is a democratic question

The main impact of climate change on the UK will be more frequent and extensive floods. That is the conclusion of every single report and study for the last decade, including the government's own major risk assessment published by the Environment Agency (EA) in 2012

So why is the key agency responsible for flood planning being cut? And how come the ConDems are lying about the amount being spent on flood prevention?

The EA is to lose 1700 jobs to cuts this year, on top of 1150 lost since 2009 – 23% of its workforce – and more than 300 flood defence schemes have been halted to save money.

Research by Friends of the Earth shows ministers are including estimated spending by local authorities and businesses in their totals. And the amount they are claiming has been spent by businesses is just an over-optimistic guess.

Prime Minister David Cameron admitted (to boos and hisses from Conservative climate change sceptics – and abuse from The Sun) that global warming is the underlying cause of the current floods.

But the EA has calculated that because of climate change, the government needs to spend an extra £20m per year every year up to 2035 on flood defences to have any chance of mitigating the impact on people, land, water supplies and wildlife.

Coastal erosion has speeded up and could make some areas uninhabitable, or at the very least, uninsurable. But some people in the worst affected areas have not even had time to recover from the last major floods in 2012. Insurers estimate paying out £400m so far. Even the lesser floods of 2012 cost the country £600m.

However, a new insurance scheme agreed between government and the insurance industry to help people in the areas most at risk to get some cover, takes no account of the impact of climate change. It is going to be capped at 500,000 properties even though the EA has estimated that between 1.7 and 3.6 million people will be affected by floods by 2050.

Given that there are currently 360 flood warnings in place across the UK, the lower end of that figure must have been reached already, if all impacts are taken into account.

The same jet stream fluctuation that has trapped the UK in a persistent low pressure area, is causing extreme cold and snow in the United states, where temperatures as low as -50 have been recorded. Winter in Ontario is always cold but even Canadians struggle to cope with -30C. It was -17C (-33C with wind chill) in the town of Hell, Michigan, prompting online jokes that Hell had frozen over.

Hell will certainly freeze over before governments take action to halt these frightening climate transformations. The truth is that even when leaders like David Cameron and Barack Obama accept the existence of climate change, capitalist states will do nothing to halt the rise in greenhouse gas emissions (up again by 2.1% in 2013). And it seems that in this time of austerity, they will do little or nothing to help people cope with the disastrous results.

Most greenhouse gas emissions, are due to - in order of impact - land use change (clearing forest and wilderness for agriculture or building on formerly agricultural land); burning coal, oil, gas, cement making and gas flaring.

And just 90 entities are responsible for 63% of all emissions:

- 50 investor-owned companies such as Chevron, Peabody, Shell, and BHP Billiton

- 31 state-owned companies such as Saudi Aramco and Statoil

- 9 state-run industries in China, Poland and the former Soviet Union.

The positive message for 2014, therefore, must be that the area for action is actually well defined and relatively narrow.  To halt climate change we need to take political, social and economic action to slow these  specific activities and then stop some of them entirely.

But to achieve that we need to find ways to replace our hollowed out democracies, operating only in the interests of those 90 entities, with a popular decision-making process that defends the interests of the 99% and their life on planet earth.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

The year we found our rulers out

As 2013 draws to a close, we can say with some certainty that while none of the major questions facing humanity are any nearer finding a solution, there is a renewed determination amongst ordinary people to reject how things stand in the search for answers.

So we have to thank our political classes for small mercies. Their ineptitude, arrogance, indifference and sheer inability to counter powerful capitalist economic and financial forces has spurred people on throughout the year.

Three inspiring examples of resistance that all began in June stand out from the countless actions around the world this year. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Brazil against government corruption and the diversion of resources towards next year’s World Cup. The country’s dash for growth at any price has made a poor population even more impoverished.

The same month, Bulgarians revolted agains the oligarchy that has left the country bankrupt and almost entirely dependent on imported goods, including food. In Turkey, a nation-wide rebellion was prompted by plans to pave over green space in Istanbul. But the quasi-Islamic government’s attack on democratic rights was also a significant factor in the revolt.

As for individual heroes, the awards go to two Americans. Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning defied the might of the American state to blow the whistle and leak evidence of illegal mass surveillance and war crimes. Sentenced to 35 years in a military prison, Manning rebuked her government with the following words:

“Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability…We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government.”

Snowden became a man without a passport as he fled the clutches of the National Security Agency. A conservative in his politics, Snowden was appalled by the secret programmes run by the NSA and GCHQ in Britain to spy on the electronic communications of its citizens. His actions have shaken Washington and London, revealing how fragile these states are behind all the bluster.

That was shown when a groundswell of public anger on both sides of the Atlantic prevented an attack on Syria. Both Congress and Parliament was paralysed by the reaction of the people. It was the first time in modern history that an illegal war was thwarted at the outset.

Nothing demonstrates more sharply the useless nature of our political system than the response to the clear and present danger presented by runaway climate change. In September, a report by thousands of scientists found that humans have used up between a half and two thirds of the amount of emissions possible before we dangerously overheat the planet.

The UK government’s response? To expand gas-fired power stations and to open up half the country to fracking, both of which will add to dangerous emissions. Madness. An international agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions is not even on the agenda. Business interests have prevailed – again.

So we have a socio-ecological impasse. The system cannot deliver what we demand in terms of a sustainable environment, decent living standards, affordable shelter and a democracy that reflects our aspirations rather than those of shareholders. Instead, in Britain in particular, there’s a policy race to the bottom between the major parties.

All this suggests in the strongest terms that  the present political and economic system is a barrier to a real democracy and has effectively disenfranchised the majority The right to vote, won in centuries of struggle, has been undermined by a corporatocracy. Increasing numbers of people evidently recognise this to the case, which is perhaps the greatest achievement of 2013 and provides a basis for optimism for the year ahead.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Fracking Capitalism for a fossil free future

From Algiers to Falkirk, New Brunswick to Colorado, Pungesti to Salford, Zurawlow to Balcombe, people are uniting to halt a new and damaging industry. They are using protest, lobbying, the courts – any tool they have to stop their communities being fracked. They have faced down police with guns and tear gas and local councils who support the corporations against their voters.

A new pamphlet – Fracking Capitalism – exposes the unholy alliance that wants to bring this risky business to a community near you. Politicians are bribed with promises of jobs, tax revenues, political donations and cheap energy, and unite with the corporations to try to convince people it will bring lower fuel bills - it won't and we explain why.

In a chapter entitled “Trapped by the corporate-state web”, the pamphlet reveals how the connections between lobbyists, former BP chief Lord Browne, government departments and ministers got the moratorium on fracking lifted. New licences are being granted, tax breaks announced and the planning system brought into line with the needs of the frackers.

Yet even this is not enough for prime minister David Cameron who told journalists: “On fracking, we do need to take action across the board to help enable this technology to go ahead. There is a worry people are going to have to go through so many different permits in order to start fracking that they simply won’t bother, so we need a simplified system.”

So the government may its reserve powers to decide permits at ministerial level, cutting out the troublesome and slow-moving local authorities, and community opposition.

In Scotland too, it is Holyrood that will decide and the SNP government has unconventional gas in its sights. A little publicised section of its policy paper Maximising the return from oil in an independent Scotland states:

New global opportunities have emerged around the recovery of unconventional oil and gas. Given the skills, technology and expertise which resides in Scottish companies, the development and recovery of these resources could potentially offer significant benefits for the Scottish oil and gas supply-chain. However, it will also be important to develop an improved insight into the wider economic impacts of global unconventional reserves on conventional markets.

Get it? The worry is not that global fracking will wreck eco-systems, fresh water supplies and speed up global warming – just that it might produce so much cheap gas that Scotland's oil and gas industry will suffer. But to offset this, Scotland can become a global fracking technology powerhouse!

Imposing fracking has devastating consequences for communities and their environments, and it will speed up climate change. The pamphlet calls it The road to ecocidal suicide and details all the evidence.

Fracking Capitalism shows how these ecological considerations are secondary in an economic system driven by profit and shareholder value. Industrialising with fossil fuel energy has caused climate change, and fracking is just the latest chapter.

Research published this week in the magazine Climatic Change traces responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions over the last 100 years to just 90 corporations. They are one third corporate giants like BP, Chevron and Exxon-Mobil, one third nation states like China and Russia, and one third state-owned (or formerly state-owned) companies such as British Coal. It is a who's who of the corporate/state web that rules our lives.

Fracking Capitalism offers an alternative to staying on this path – an action plan for the eco-social crisis these giants have created. Going beyond building resistance to fracking, to creating a movement to put power firmly in the hands of presently powerless communities, is what is proposed.

A World to Win wants to hear what you think about these ideas and stands ready to work with individuals, campaigns and movements for this kind of fundamental change.

Get your copy of Fracking Capitalism today.

Penny Cole

Environment Editor

ConDemned to climate change as profit comes first

The ConDems’ answer to the stark warnings contained in the latest scientific assessment of climate change is to put forward policies that will actually intensify the ecological crisis.       

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report shows that humans have used up between a half and two thirds of the amount of emissions possible before we dangerously overheat the planet.

But the government’s response to the 5th IPCC report on climate change can be summed up as follows:

• Chancellor George Osborne states he does not want the UK to be at the forefront of tackling climate change
• Energy minister Michael Fallon wants to end the obligation on energy companies to fund improved insulation in people's homes.
• Justice minister Chris Grayling says that fracking for shale gas is the way forward
• Climate Change minister Owen Paterson says that climate change is not all bad - fewer people will die in the winter for example.

In other words, the ConDems will do everything in their power to serve the interests of the energy corporations and the banks who finance dirty fuel. And it is the same reaction from governments right across the globe.

Since the IPCC is all about modelling trends, maybe somebody should model the trends of global government responses to their reports.

Here are statistics that could be input into a new International Panel on Capitalist Climate Chaos model:

• Since the 4th IPCC report published five years ago an additional 200 billion tonnes of CO2 have been released into the atmosphere.

• CO2 emissions are 60% higher than at the time of the first IPCC report in 1990.

• To avoid dangerous climate 60% of energy will need to come from renewables by 2030 (International Energy Agency). We are on track to achieve just 18% globally.

• An industry report predicts that world coal-fired power plant capacity will increase more than a third from 2010 to 2020.

• The role of gas in the global energy mix will increase by one third in the period from 2010 to 2018.

• The UK Treasury wants 30 new gas power stations built.

• Every climate summit has failed to achieve a global binding agreement on reducing emissions.

You might ask how is it possible for governments to go on financing the work of the IPCC and even to say they believe that climate change is happening, but at the same time to continue along this path?

It is because they exist only as functionaries of a capitalist hegemony that attempts to rule every aspect of human society at this point. Everything is predicated on production for profit. Competition for markets means costs are constantly being driven down.

And it’s got a lot worse since the recession, which coincided with publication of the  previous IPCC report. So Osborne can say that being competitive is more important than tackling climate change.

Desperate for solutions, it seems that some members of the IPCC are putting their faith in a renewed carbon market. This time, market forces will be shut out, unlike previous schemes such as the EU model that had to be bailed out and restructured recently. They believe this could enable governments, finally, to agree binding limits on emissions. It's all a pipedream.

Our present planetary social and economic system cannot make progress when global co-operation and mutual assistance are needed. No amount of pressure on governments and states is going to change this fundamental.

In the scales against this we can put modest progress towards environmentally sensitive production, recycling, pollution reduction, carbon sequestration and development of renewables.

All the efforts of scientists, researchers, businesses and foundations to find a different way of living and producing, are not wasted. They represent a road map for the future. The climate scientists who are holding up a mirror to the system are allies of fundamental change.

But they and we must stop wasting our time stirring and stirring the empty pot of international climate talks and market “solutions”. Instead we need to write a new plan based on meeting people's needs and not on generating profit, for growth in equality and fairness rather than growth in commodities, and for a democratic, bottom-up political structure where we can make this happen.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Obama's greenwash won't wash

President Obama's much-publicised climate change speech this week was simply a smokescreen for the forthcoming decision to allow the second phase of the Keystone tar sands pipeline to go ahead.

Obama claimed to be boldly taking on the climate change deniers in Congress, by issuing a presidential memo instructing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to use Clean Air laws to cap greenhouse gas emissions.

But there's little to get excited about here, because the level of the cap is unstated. It won't be announced until next year for possible implementation in 2015. No doubt the level will still be mired in political and legal battles long after Obama has left the White House.

Campaigners are convinced this is a sleazy trade-off to silence opposition to Keystone 2.

And it seems to be working, with the Sierra Club, one of the US's biggest environmental organisations and a key member of the anti-Keystone campaign, issuing a gushing call on its members to "thank the President".

But what Obama actually said was "climate change issues" will be "relevant" to the decision on the pipeline carrying heavy crude tar sand products from Canada to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. Relevant maybe, but not decisive. As Tom Steyer, former hedge fund investor turned environmental activist said, curbing emissions will be meaningless if Keystone goes ahead.

Obama made much of the fact that the US is now the world's biggest gas producer. He failed to point out that this "natural gas" (sounds nice doesn't it?) mostly comes from fracking. Across the US, communities are being destroyed by this process, which pollutes water supplies and makes people ill. But he mentioned none of that.

Obama claimed the fact that the US is once again building nuclear power stations as a positive. But given that there are already some 65,000 tons of dangerous nuclear waste in temporary storage throughout the US, it is hard to see how this can be a good thing!

He used this speech to herald federal support for stepping up gas exports, but isn't that just what the Thatcher government did and look where it got the UK. The North Sea gas supplies are all gone, burned up or sold cheap on the world market.

Energy supply relies on Russian imports, pushing prices through the roof. No wonder the state is so excited about shale gas as an alternative. A new survey by the British Geological survey showing there is a greater quantity of shale gas than was previously thought is being presented as some wonderful bonanza.  

The boom in unconventional oil and gas is a mark of how desperate governments are to keep the fossil fuel market stable. The question is, do we want to pay the price in pollution and health risks? The British and US governments say yes, but then they would, wouldn't they?

Obama pointed out that since 2006 the US has made the world's biggest emissions reductions. But just as in the UK, most of this was achieved by switching power stations to natural gas.

He also claimed natural gas is a 'transition fuel' whilst the economy switches to renewables but that will turn out to be as much of a fraud as here in the UK where renewables still amount to just 7% of the UK energy mix. In fact the only fuel that increased its share in 2012 was coal!

What Obama described was a fantasy climate change policy. It delivers big profits, needs no significant public investment, pushes fundamental change far in the future and requires no change in behaviour by companies. This may be the corporate government's dream scenario but for the rest of us, it's a total nightmare.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Growth addicts meet in Watford

George Osborne, the ConDem’s chancellor and Labour’s Ed Balls, who are locked in a fierce agreement about the need for more austerity to promote growth – work that one out for yourselves – are in not-so-exotic Watford this week.

They are rubbing shoulders with the rest of the 140-odd big shots, aka “global political and financial elite” of the US and European capitalist economies attending the highly secretive 61st annual Bilderberg meeting.

This year, however, it’s not quite so secret, as the organisers have decided to pre-empt the leaks by publishing lists of the participants from 21 European and North American countries and 12 key topics.

The assembly is heavily skewed in favour of the top men of banking and finance, but they’ve been joined by the key figures from the most visible global corporations including Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, Google’s Eric Schmidt, Jorma Ollila, chairman, Royal Dutch Shell, Craig Mundie of Microsoft and a small number of big hitters from other key industries.

Also on board are opinion leaders from politics and the media who’ll be advancing what they’ve learned of the developing needs of the powerful in the year to come. With resistance to austerity growing everywhere, the organisers have brought in the military.

In attendance are General David Petraeus, former head of the US Army, and Olivier de Bavinchove, Commander of Eurocorps, the little known 60,000 strong standing army of the European Union.

Top of the list of key topics is “Can the US and Europe grow faster and create jobs?” No surprise there. Perhaps it is just a touch odd, however, that the list doesn’t include even a passing reference to climate change.

Especially in the light of current extreme weather events spanning the globe.

Or is it?

As the participants assembled, heavy rain had deluged large parts of Central Europe – Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Switzerland. Some areas like Passau on the Danube have experienced their worst floods in 500 years.

Meanwhile, the US National Weather Centre announced that, at 2.6 miles, one of last Friday’s five tornadoes to hit Oklahoma was the widest ever recorded - with wind speeds reaching 295 mph.  This followed the devastation of the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore on May 20 that killed 24 people. It was the first time in that two such powerful tornadoes struck have Oklahoma within such a short period of time. 

Following last year’s unprecedented drought in the USA, 82% of New Mexico is experiencing “severe” or “exceptional” drought conditions, according to Dan Ware, of the state’s forestry agency, of historic proportions not seen since the 1950s. A wave of vast wildfires has been sweeping through California.  

This intensification of extreme weather across the globe is the result of the Bilderbergers’ top priority – profit-driven, economic growth. The reckless exploitation of resources to produce commodities with limited life spans, an addictive dependence on fossil fuel and the industrialisation of food production have driven climate change to crisis point.

And they want more of it. They’ll try anything and everything within their power to pursue it. More public spending cuts in the dream of reviving the private sector? Don’t worry, Labour agrees with the Tories on that one.

Unrepayable debt? Never mind, generations to come will be made to pay. Record levels of unemployment reaching as high as two-thirds among young Greeks? Press on, it’s reducing the cost of labour. Demonstrations, riots, violence on the streets? Bring out the army. Governments overthrown? They just appoint their own.

Breaking the power of the Bilderbergers and their ruling class chums throughout the world is a priority if we’re going to get through this historic economic, political and ecological crisis in one piece.  

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

Crying wolf is not good enough, Martin

When one of the most respected commentators on the world economy repeatedly expresses his profound pessimism about the prospects of an effective response to the “real and present dangers of climate change”, it is surely worth some serious consideration.

Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2000 “for services to financial journalism”. He is an honorary fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, honorary fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, an honorary fellow of the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy (Oxonia) and an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham.

Despite his pessimism Wolf has clearly not given up on a campaign to convince his readers that there is still something that can be done. In his second column in two weeks triggered by the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide passing beyond 400 parts per million, he says that “judged by the world’s inaction, climate sceptics have won”.   

In his first column, he alleged that “collectively, humanity has yawned and decided to let the dangers mount.” 

Wolf is convinced by the consensus of scientific evidence and rightly damning of the sceptics who are “corrupted by the money and fame”, but he says that there are “deep-seated” economic reasons for “our” failure “to shift our choices away from the ones now driving ever-rising emissions”.

He writes that data on the burning of fossil fuels since the mid-18th century show a consistent rise in annual emissions of carbon dioxide. There was, he adds, a slowdown in the rate of rise of annual emissions in the 1980s and 1990s. But this slowdown was reversed in the 2000s, as China’s coal-burning increased. Today, 30%  of CO2 in the atmosphere is “directly due to humanity”.

There’s a consistent theme in Wolf’s analysis that he shares with the official, “politically-correct” presentation of the science by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: We’re all to blame, and seemingly helpless to do anything much about it; apart, that is, from a faint, fading hope in an eight-point shopping list of increasingly more desperate and admittedly inadequate measures, aimed at the world’s governments.

But, fortunately, he is wrong. The objective source of his ideological error lies in his blinkered view of the social, economic and political conditions which, currently, govern –  and threaten – all of our lives.  As one of its chief advocates, it would be surprising indeed if Wolf issued any critique of the profit-driven economy that became the dominant force in the 18th century and ensured that “we” set out on the path of burning the fossilised remains of millions of years of vegetation. 

But it wasn’t “us”, as Wolf claims. Responsibility lies with the system of social relations that was ushered in and consolidated during the Industrial Revolution and beyond. “Us”, the majority, had no say, and still don’t in how things are done. Capitalism “freed” labourers from the land but at the same time deprived them of the tools by which they could generate an income for themselves and their families. Instead, we all became wage slaves.

This crisis-ridden capitalist system, dependent on the accelerating exploitation of what it necessarily regards as its God-given right to the planet’s resources is the clear and present danger, Mr Wolf. 

If “we” are to survive, the choice we have to make is to bring this period of history to its conclusion.  A month ago, on April 22, The United Nations marked International Mother Earth Day by acknowledging the leading role played by the Bolivian government. Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said: “We need a paradigm shift – a transformation – in the way we produce, use and share energy.”

If we are able to bring about this change, it will be through the replacement of the current social relations. We’ll need a system in which we become stewards of the Earth, not exploiters.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

Climate change adding to health inequality

It's the Easter holidays, when households might have traditionally planned a Sunday feast of roast lamb, peas, roast potatoes, mint sauce, apple pie and custard. But it's a custom many families can only dream about.

With thousands of lambs dead in the fields and a drought in New Zealand so bad the browned earth can be seen from space, roast lamb is too pricy for many.

Peas, potatoes and apples will also be expensive. Waitrose managing director Mark Price has warned that last year's disastrous weather is working its way through the market causing big price increases. And that’s even before the impact of the current freezing weather is taken into account.

“In some commodities, the increases will be massive,” he says. “It’s bread, vegetables, all produce. The apple crop was down 20%-30%, so apple prices have to go up. You have only seen the tip of the iceberg.”

The price of 1 kg of Braeburn apples has risen by an average of 20% in the big supermarkets, from £1.62 at the beginning of 2012 to £1.95.

Meat prices are also soaring, because of high feed costs. And now farmers are having to bring early calves back indoors and buy in feed for animals that ought to be grazing spring grass.

Wheat yields in England are down by an average of 15% and in some places as high as 35%, according to the National Farmers Union. The world market price for wheat has risen by 29% compared to last year, after heat waves and drought hit the 2012 harvests in Russia and the US.

The UK government's chief scientist Professor Sir John Beddington, in his last week in the job, made clear that the extreme weather responsible for this growing food crisis is going to be a feature for many years to come.

"The variation we are seeing in temperature or rainfall is double the rate of the average. That suggests that we are going to have more droughts, we are going to have more floods, we are going to have more sea surges and we are going to have more storms. These are the sort of changes that are going to affect us in quite a short timescale," he warned.

He explained that climate changes lag behind the CO2 emissions that cause them. In other words, it is the CO2 already in the atmosphere that is causing the current weather extremes.

But capitalist economies are emitting more CO2 than ever, and in the UK, the government has taken measures to boost fossil fuel burning. The situation is not going to get better any time soon.

And of course the impact of higher food prices is worst for poorest people. The price of healthy produce such as fruit and vegetables has risen by 34% in the last five years and that is nothing to what is coming later this year.

Climate change is now a key contributor to the growing health inequality in the UK and the government's response shows its flagrant hypocrisy. They continue to spend millions on TV adverts urging people to eat their "5-a-day" when their own statistics show that  the 10% of families on lowest incomes are actually reducing their spending on fruit and veg to save money.

We need to bring the energy and food corporates into a new and sustainable economic framework. With profit driven out of the system, we can start acting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt climate change.

And we will need to start adapting to the changes that have already taken place; that means supporting farmers to sell their produce at a fair price to not-for-profit co-operatives. Then every family can have a healthy diet - and the occasional celebration!

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Climate change brings extreme rain and flooding

As many as 5.2m UK properties are already at risk of flooding, with 2.4m threatened by rivers and the sea, and a further 2.8 million at risk from surface water from overflowing drains. This number will rise significantly as climate change increases the volume of winter rains.

Statistics from the National Climate Information Centre now show that days of extreme rain have become more common since 1960. This is defined as the sort of downpour expected once in 100 days. Last year, extreme rain fell around once every 70 days.

Scientists say that as the world has warmed by 0.7C, the atmosphere is able to hold 4% more moisture, which means more potential rain. Last year was the wettest in England's recorded history.  

The flood misery in large areas of England, Wales and Scotland is far from over. Huge bands of rain from the Atlantic are forecast until mid-January affecting many areas but particularly the south-west of England.

Thousands of homes, shops and businesses have flooded and disrupted rail and road journeys mean it’s been anything but a fun holiday for hundreds of thousands of people.

Once the floods recede, the clean up begins. As Americans whose homes were flooded In Hurricane Sandy are discovering, the post-flood period is a nightmare.

Blankets of black mould up to two inches thick flourish on walls causing respiratory illnesses that could harm people long term. Many thousands of New Yorkers have found their insurance policies don’t cover flood damage. It turns out only 18% of Americans have flood insurance.

In the UK some areas may become uninsurable, as the government and insurance industry wrangle over a protection plan. Environment minister Richard Benyon said: “It’s rather a shame it’s been raised at this particular moment when there are a lot of people with flooded homes.” But surely this is the best time to talk about it and sort it?

If anyone doubts the cause of the floods, here is a map published by the European Environment Agency in November. It shows the increase in winter rain in north-west Europe, resulting from climate change, alongside that other key risk factor for floods – building on flood plains and concreting over the land.

This remarkable report from the EEA is an in-depth study of all the varied impacts likely to result from climate change on different EU member states. Here’s a summary map:

As can be seen, the dangers to European society and economy are more than matched by the risks to precious eco-systems.

Last year was a dangerous turning point: unprecedented melting of the ice caps, droughts, storms and hurricanes and for the UK, the wettest summer on record and now the floods. The US is currently hit by snow storms but believe it or not, 15 inches of snow is not enough to ease the Midwest drought. Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and South Dakota are still in the two worst drought categories. But the Democrats and Republicans agreed not to mention climate change during the Presidential election.

We can’t halt climate change entirely now – the emissions already in the atmosphere are going to have big effects. But we need to remove all future decisions from the paralysed profit-focused governments and corporations and instead form a network of People’s Assemblies.

The network could take steps to start cutting emissions now, perhaps holding warming below 2 degrees in the best-case scenario and adopt and emergency plan to mitigate unavoidable impacts, for example by

•  Improving natural flood defences on coasts and river mouths Halting construction on flood plains
•  Encouraging communities to remove the concrete carapace that is strangling drainage, freeing up as much land as possible.

AA global network of People’s Assemblies could quickly put together a binding agreement on emissions reductions, and open the way for a new era of sustainable production. Acting how to achieve this should become the focus for meetings up and down the country early in the New Year.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

When people decided that enough was enough

Long ago, society was being overwhelmed by a series of catastrophes to which there seemed no answers. Unemployment, poverty and inequality were rife as a global crisis took hold. The old capitalist economic system had run its course and was unsustainable.

The world was choked with products, many of them out of date as soon as they came off the production lines. Huge dumps and rubbish piles accumulated and overwhelmed parts of the planet. Waste, some of it lethal, became big business as it was shipped across the globe.

People became poorer as they lost jobs and services were cut by a undemocratic governments in the pockets of the corporations. Increasing numbers depended on charity food banks just to survive. Obesity and diabetes epidemics affected the poor – due to the marketing of junk food by agribusiness and supermarkets.

As ordinary people fell into deeper debt and could not afford high rents and mortgages, they saw their government continue to hand over hand vast amounts of public money to bankers and financiers. Britain’s debts continued to rise at every level as the global money markets and speculators ruled the roost. The ConDem coalition blamed the people and said they had to tighten their belts for another five years.  

Floods swept Britain for an entire year as extreme weather resulted from climate change. Green belt areas, parks and woods were ruined, as property speculators ran rampant. On the global scale, ecological disasters mounted. Air pollution due to carbon emissions together with rainforest clearing increased icecap meltdown at a rate that outpaced scientific predictions.

By 2012, parliament as a representative, democratic law-making body had become discredited. Corrupt collusion between media, parliament and the police was exposed and people stopped trusting those in power. Large numbers of people refused to vote in elections. Top state institutions - the BBC and the Church of England - were riddled with crises. The Trade Union Congress organised a protest against government cuts, but people had clearly lost confidence in its feeble bleating.

People could see no way out through the existing political system and could only look forward to years of cuts in jobs and services. The parliamentary alternative was a return to Labour, which was equally – if not more – tied to the global corporations and business.

But during 2012, there were glimmerings that people realised new kinds of politics were needed. Despite the media obsession with medals, naked corporate interest and security madness, people were enthused by the London Olympics. They seemed to indicate a hidden mass creativity whereby ordinary people could accomplish the impossible.

In 2013, people realised that the political system, the institutions of the state, had become a brake on the aspirations of those it ruled over. A fundamental transition to greater democracy was needed.   

Inspired by the global Occupy movement and movements such as those in Egypt and Latin America – in particular the Cochabamba World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth - people in Britain said it was time to determine their own fate. They looked into their history and discovered that at the time of the English Revolution during the 1640s, the Leveller movement had put forward an Agreement of the People.

Surely a new constitution could provide a new framework for the society of the 21st century? If the existing system had lost its legitimacy it was up to the people to work out a new solution. So groups of people in London and around the country began to call for a new Agreement of the People for the 21^st century.

It provided a basis for transferring power from the old institutions to democratic grass roots movements, organised by co-leaders who were accountable to people’s assemblies. They took the discussion over what rights such an Agreement had to enshrine out far and wide through the country. Large numbers of people came forward with their grievances and brought their ideas for a future society into the debate.

The idea of a constitution began to take root and eventually the mass of the people did it. They rose up and cleared out the fat cats, the speculators and the billionaires and set up an alternative people’s parliament, using the internet and social networking technology to make it inclusive. Land was declared a common treasury. Global corporations in Britain, banks and supermarkets were taken into co-operative ownership and control.

The transition was not easy. As the movement from below gained strength, some people in the ruling elites broke ranks and joined in. But those in power did not want to let go of their privileges and resisted. But for once in history, the movement did not allow itself to be taken by surprise. They realised that they had to take power from the old rulers. In the end, the One Percent could not keep their machinations secret, were overwhelmed and lost control for good.

A World to Win editors 

Revolutionary New Year's greetings!

Coal leads the way as fossil fuels burn up the planet

The rapid expansion of fossil fuel burning which is frying the planet’s atmosphere faster than ever is entirely unnecessary and economically unjustifiable. And that’s official.

According to the International Energy Authority’s 2012 annual assessment, simple, economically-useful, energy efficiency measures could cut the growth in global energy demand by half and as a result, the demand for oil would peak before 2020.

The reduction in demand would be equivalent to the current combined production of Russian and Norway.

There would be greater energy security for countries worried about having to import their fuel and there would be huge economic growth as buildings and infrastructure were made more energy efficient. Hundreds of thousands could be employed and fuel bills cut by 20% on average.

But the direction of travel of global capitalism is the exact opposite. Subsidies are instead being poured into fossil fuel production – six times more than those available to renewables, amounting to $523 billion in 2011, up almost 30% on 2010.

As a result emissions of greenhouse gases reached their highest-ever level in 2011. Current energy plans of governments across the world will lock in a long-term average global temperature increase of 3.6 °C, not the 2.0°C governments claim they are committed to.

Renewables are the fastest growing form of energy, but that is starting from a very low level. Coal, which is responsible for 40% of greenhouse gas emissions from fuel, is going through a massive global expansion. Production is up 6% on 2010.

The rejection of nuclear by some governments in the wake of the Fukushima disaster did not lead to an expansion of renewables but to an expansion in coal burning. For example, Germany announced it would get out of nuclear within a decade, but this year it increased the amount of electricity generated from coal by 12% over 2011.

China is investing hugely in renewables, but coal-fired output grew as much there in the last decade as nuclear, wind and hydro combined.

In the US rapid expansion of “fracking”, plus new offshore finds have fuelled a dash for gas. But coal production is on the increase, licensed by the Obama administration and so the US is now exporting cheap coal all over the world.

The IEA says  that “the world is still failing to put the global energy system onto a more sustainable path” and despite an increase in low-carbon sources of energy “fossil fuels remain dominant in the global energy mix”.

The big question is why? Why are we pouring tax subsidies into fossil fuels, instead of renewables or energy efficiency? Why is a country like South Africa, an ideal test bed for solar power, pouring government funding into coal? In its post-crash-printing-money phase, the Obama administration funded excellent solar projects, which have brought major advances. Why is that not the US’s new export, instead of dirty old coal?

The “whys” are endless and exhausting but the answer is quite straightforward – it’s the bottom line that counts. Corporations use their power over governments to keep their priorities sweet. Six of the richest 100 mining billionaires are Chinese, five are Indian. The richest of them all is Brazilian Eike Batista whose personal net worth is $32 billion.

And at number 42 is Patrice Motsepe, South Africa’s first black billionaire, who bought up failing mineral businesses and made them profitable by cutting costs and increasing exploitation. You can be sure he is not pressing his friends in the ANC government to shift funding into renewables.

There’s a lot of money to be made from destroying the planet’s climate and eco-system. Only a transfer of political power to popular democracies acting in the interests of the majority and not the oligarchs and corporations, can halt the process.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

US faces a perfect storm on all fronts

After the devastation delivered by a perfect storm, the prospect of the United States falling off a “fiscal cliff” within two months is not one that America’s ruling political and corporate elites are looking forward to with any relish.

With next week’s presidential and general elections on a knife-edge, the economic future is as unpredictable as the super-storm that has wrecked large areas of the east coast and shut down New York.

While the media coverage of the impact on the United States is wall to wall, you should know that storm Sandy destroyed 70% of the crops in southern Haiti, still far from recovered from the 2010 earthquake, and caused widespread deaths of livestock. Jamaica, Cuba, the Bahamas were badly damaged too.

The US government will, of course, print the billions needed to repair the country’s infrastructure and get transport moving again, the aforementioned Caribbean nations will stagger on until the next storm arrives, no better prepared in the future than this time around.

Even in New York, however, the gross inequality that is the feature of the city and many other places across the country, showed itself in the storm. As Reuters’ David Rohde reported: “There were residents like me who could invest all of their time and energy into protecting their families. And there were New Yorkers who could not. Those with a car could flee... But the city’s cooks, doormen, maintenance men, taxi drivers and maids left their loved ones at home.”

The city is the most economically divided it has been in a decade, according to the New York Times. Over 20% of the city is in poverty. In Manhattan, the wealthiest 20% made $391,022 a year on average The poorest 20 percent made $9,681. Manhattan’s richest fifth made 40 times more money than its poorest fifth. Only a couple of other countries in the world in sub-Sahara Africa display such inequality.

Manhattan is the home of the New York Stock Exchange which will open again today. Whilst eight million are without power, and likely to remain so for days, the show must go on.

But the so-called fiscal cliff is looming large. This is a combination of expiring tax cuts coupled with mandatory spending reductions by the federal government totalling some $600 billion. Unless Congress can agree a deal – which seems most unlikely – the cuts will automatically kick-in on December 31. Many corporations have postponed investment decisions to see what happens.

The uncertainty gripping the economy is matched by the certainty that more extreme weather events will hit the country. One meteorologist, asked how a storm a could do so much damage, ruefully explained that in addition to the full moon and high tides, Sandy itself had been driven off its northward course and onto the coast by two weather fronts moving on opposing paths. Crucially, rather than losing momentum the storm had picked up energy from the sea warmed as a consequence of the changing climate.

Earlier this year, scientists calculated that fossil fuel producers intended to extract reserves which would, by mid-century, generate carbon dioxide emissions five times greater then the level considered “safe” to prevent a 2 degree rise in global temperature.

So Sandy’s impact is just a small indicator of the much worse results we can expect to see if current economic, social and political relations are allowed to continue.

Priorities have to change if civilisation is to find a way forward. Capitalist logic, driving in two opposing directions, stands in the way of progress. A “return to growth” is essential for profitability, but overcapacity must be eliminated to make it possible. That’s why the wages of US workers are being driven down and the living standards of many Afro-Americans are lower than ever. Whoever wins next Tuesday, it won’t be the average American.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

World Bank policies help drive global hunger

The World Bank has issued a global hunger warning after food prices soared by 10% in a single month from June to July. But this is disingenuous to say the least since the agency’s own policies backing corporate greed, are major contributors to hunger.

Maize and soybeans reached all time peaks due to an unprecedented summer of droughts and high temperatures in the United States and Eastern Europe, according to the World Bank’s latest food price watch report.

From June to July, maize and wheat rose by 25% and soybeans by 17%. The lives of millions of people are threatened, particularly in Africa and the Middle East. For example maize prices rose 113% in Mozambique in July and sorghum by 220% in South Sudan.

Drought in the US damaged crops of maize and soybeans, for which it is the world’s largest exporter. The dry summer in the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan reduced the productivity of wheat.

“We cannot allow these historic price hikes to turn into a lifetime of perils as families take their children out of school and eat less nutritious food to compensate for the high prices,” said World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim. “Countries must strengthen their targeted programmes to ease the pressure on the most vulnerable population, and implement the right policies.”

But this is hypocritical since the Bank’s own policies, supporting the requirements of the corporations and the rest of the global élite, are major contributors to hunger.

For example, the global land grab is entirely endorsed by the agency’s free market approach. Instead of bringing in rules to end this new brutal colonialism, the Bank and the UN developed a code of practice to facilitate it.

Governments are supported to treat traditional lands as state land with the right to sell it off to the highest bidder. Their own people are driven off to work for low wages from the new masters or to join the populations in the slums and barrios of the cities.

The mono-crops grown for export, using large quantities of water and fertilizer have negative effects on local markets. Water is being pumped to support the new large-scale agri-businesses, leaving family allotments, often planted by women, without adequate supply. And when the land is bled dry – literally – the land grabbers will move on, using investment funds from corporations like Goldman Sachs, to buy cheap somewhere else.

So far over 83 million hectares of land have been part of the global rush for land - 56.2 million hectares in Africa, 5% of the continent’s total agricultural land. Worldwide, 20 million hectares of land are growing crops to feed people who live a thousand miles away or more. And of course these intensive farming methods, clearing scrub land and pumping it full of fertiliser only serve to add to greenhouse gas emissions.

The World Bank’s much-vaunted focus on developing drought-resistant grains is all about profit – these will be grown on grabbed land and then exported to feed the beef that ends up in globo-burgers, or to burn up as bio-diesel.

La Via Campesina, the global movement of peasant farmers, sums it up by saying that the so-called agrarian reform supported by institutions like the World Bank, is all about sustaining capitalism:

“Because of the global crises, taking control of the earth’s remaining resources – land, water, forests, biodiversity – has become crucial to the survival of capitalism and the corporations. At the recently concluded Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this resource grab has been institutionalised under the label of ‘green economy’.”

Ending hunger means returning the land to the people to work in ways that mitigate the impacts of climate change that are now unavoidable. That would certainly involve abolishing capitalist agencies like the World Bank in favour of  democratic local, regional, national and international assemblies. Scientists could then help the majority develop ways to maintain themselves by sustaining the eco-systems they are a part of.

Penny Cole

Environment editor