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

Moving goalposts no solution to climate change

A group of eminent climate scientists has come to the not-so-scientific conclusion that adopting the 2°C target for global warming has “failed to drive social change”. Their proposals to move the goalposts are unlikely to meet with any more success.

A group working with the prestigious Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia say that the prospects for holding average global warming to below 2°C are “rapidly decreasing”. There’s no arguing with that conclusion, which was reinforced by the recent inter-governmental climate change panel assessment.

That  showed that the world’s “carbon budget” - the amount of greenhouse gas that can be emitted without exceeding two degrees warming - could be used up entirely by 2040.  

Carbon emissions have continued to increase, intensified by a turn to shale gas and oil extraction in the United States and the expansion of coal-fired power in China and elsewhere. Cost-cutting by corporations looking for a competitive edge in the recession has put carbon reduction investment projects into cold storage for the duration.

The Tyndall group argue in a peer-reviewed paper published in Climate Policy that too much of the debate has been taken up with when/or if global warming will cross the 2°C threshold that scientists agree will have irreversible and catastrophic results.

And their response? “Society should accept that adopting science-informed targets such as 2°C has failed to drive social change and governors should instead concentrate on delivering what is politically achievable in the short to medium term.” (emphasis added)

They urge policy makers to “explore the risks and opportunities associated with alternative goals and targets”. What are these exactly? The Tyndall group has more modest ideas: mitigate for 2°C but adapt for 4°C; adopt more specific goals; be politically “more pragmatic”; “recommit” to substantial reductions in emissions.

While Professor Andrew Jordan of the Tyndall Centre says “this need not be a pretext for abandoning the existing target”, there’s a grave danger that’s how government policy makers will view the proposals.

In reality this is how most governments already act - minimum targets, half-hearted attempts at renewable power, "green capitalism", failed energy saving schemes and pathetic amounts of aid to countries like Bangladesh already facing climate change impacts. None of it has reduced emissions overall or prepared us for what is coming up the line.

In the end, no amount of finessing targets, alternative proposals, mitigation ideas etc. will cut the mustard. The present international system of states cannot reach an agreement on global warming for other reasons. These are primarily to do with the nature of the economies they represent.

Climate talks have foundered because the corporations set the agenda. Their mantra is growth based on year-on-year expansion. Without that, capitalism seizes up and goes into recession. Then cost reduction takes over, ensuring that even dirtier methods are used or maintained.

Even as the Tyndall scientists do their best to extract humanity from this impasse, another study in the journal Nature confirms the urgency of the situation. It says that between 2047 and 2069, the mean annual climate of an average location will pass the most extreme conditions experienced during the past 150 years.

Tropical areas will be among the first to see the climate exceed historical limits, threatening significant rainforest ecosystems. The study team from the University of Hawaii estimate that up to 5 billion people could be affected under a business-as-usual emissions scenario.

The study “provides a new metric of when climate change will lead to an environment that we’ve never seen before,” said author Camilo Mora, a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

How many more warnings like this do we need. The 2°C target was adopted as an aim of international climate policy back in the 1990s. Previous warnings that humanity will overshoot this target have failed to stimulate climate policy, as the Tyndall group point out.

We have to conclude that those in charge are beyond stimulation as they move robotic-like towards a precipice, accepting their marching orders without too many questions. It’s a question, then, of us or them. The case for replacing the political and economic system with  non-profit, democratic alternatives has never been stronger.

Paul Feldman

Communications 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

Action needed NOW as CO2 emissions take off

Hopes of holding the global rise in temperatures to 2˚C, an increase that would be disastrous in itself, have vanished after figures just released show that 2012 saw the second biggest ever annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.  

The US government observatory at Mauna Loa in Hawaii measures the amount of CO2 present in the northern hemisphere and they have found this rose by 2.67 parts per million (ppm) in 2012, reaching a total of 395ppm.

Just to recall the historic figures illustrated by the famous "hockey stick graph", atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased by almost 40% since pre-industrial times, from approximately 280ppm in the 18th century to 390ppm in 2010. As we see from the Mauna Loa reports, in the last two years there has been a further 5ppm increase and no sign of any slowing.

And this is not surprising since far from taking measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, governments and corporations are burning more fossil fuel than ever. Bringing coal tar sands into production, building new pipelines, extracting oil from deep-water sources and a leap in the use of coal to generate energy have combined to create this disaster.

To have a 50% chance of keeping global warming below 2°C , CO2 needs to stabilise at below 450ppm. To be sure of it, requires stabilising at 400ppm. As these latest figures show 400ppm will be reached in 2014 at current rates of GHG emissions, and 450ppm by around 2030 if "business as usual" is permitted to continue. A 2˚C increase in global temperatures would lead to:

• complete destruction of the world’s coral reefs
• 26 million people displaced by rising sea levels, hurricanes and cyclones
• 300 million people at risk of hunger due to failing crops
• 2.8 billion people without access to clean water
• spread of diseases such as malaria and Dengue Fever to new areas
• mass extinctions in the Arctic with only 42% of the Arctic tundra stable.
• the Greenland ice cap melted
• loss of the majority of the remaining major forests of China, Europe and America.

Temperature measurements published by the National Climatic Data Centre (NOAA) show we are already on the road to these kinds of disastrous outcomes. Particularly significant is the global split between areas of unprecedented heat and others of rain.  

Governments have demonstrated that they will not act; we must find ways to replace them with democratic assemblies of the world’s peoples who will act to protect the eco-system of which they are a part.

This cannot be postponed.  The Bolivian government should reconvene the World People's Conference on Climate Change, as an online crowd sourcing project. This should aim to create a global assembly of People's Assemblies in order to plan how to take forward the Cochabamba Accord, the declaration of Mother Earth Rights.

This rightly declared: “Under capitalism, Mother Earth is converted into a source of raw materials, and human beings into consumers and a means of production, into people that are seen as valuable only for what they own, and not for what they are.”

Sharing our efforts across the planet would allow us to connect the spirit of the Arab Spring, Occupy and other forms of resistance whilst going beyond protesting and demanding governments act, which they will not. Instead we can start to plan out the social, political and economic changes we ourselves will implement.  

Priority Actions for People’s Assemblies in Britain

• Consult widely on an energy transition plan, moving rapidly away from fossil fuels to renewables with a focus on energy saving 
• End fuel poverty by bringing energy companies into common ownership under democratic control; introduce a sliding scale for energy payments  
• Fund community-based local energy programmes, with insulation grants for households and small businesses, small-scale renewable energy, regulation of industrial and commercial energy use  
• Bring rail and bus networks into not-for-profit ownership, slashing fares and working with transport planners to create an integrated transport system  
• Reinstate rail and bus services in rural, semi-rural areas
• Create public transport/cycle-only boxes in the centre of cities
• discourage car use in cities by providing park and ride and better public transport    
• Support local car pools and car-sharing projects  
• Set upper limits on total flight miles in and out of Britain and distribute them fairly through an air miles system; halt airport expansion
• Halt plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations and clean up and safely store existing waste.

Penny Cole
Environment editort

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

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

Extreme weather set to get worse

The UK has just experienced record rainfall in June – double the average. Until now, scientists would only go so far as to say that this is consistent with weather patterns that can be expected from climate change.

But with extreme weather affecting large areas of the United States, the scientific case against continuing with the capitalist system of production for profit is mounting.

Massive forest fires, heat waves and droughts are devastating much of the country. This comes just a week after Tropical Storm Debby flooded Florida. Some 113 million Americans are now in the excessive heat advisory zone. That’s more than a third of the entire US population.

A relentless heat wave has gripped the eastern United States. More than 2,000 heat records have been broken over the past week. Thousands more were set in June. Even more striking, the first day of July also broke records for the highest-ever recorded temperatures on any date at spots in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Nashville broke its all-time record, hitting F109 degrees . Authorities urged people to stay indoors and cancelled outdoor events this weekend. A violent thunderstorm known as a "derecho" left a more than 700-mile trail of destruction across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic Friday, cutting power to millions, killing at least 23 people. Fast-moving fires have destroyed hundreds of homes in Colorado and are threatening thousands more. The fires have grown so large you can see the effect from space.

Whilst many scientists remain cagey about the direct attribution of these extreme weather events to global warming induced by “human activity” - more precisely 150 years of capitalist industry - they are all agreed that the chances of such events are already much higher as a result of the effects of polluting emissions.  According to Dr Clare Goodess, senior researcher at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit:

Over the last five years or so, a growing number of peer-reviewed studies have provided convincing evidence of a detectable human influence on the increases in high temperature extremes which have been observed over the last few decades over the globe as a whole and over large-scale regions such as Europe. It has been demonstrated that human influence has more than doubled the risk of a hot European summer like that of 2003 occurring, and substantially increased the risk of flooding which occurred in England and Wales in autumn 2000.

Kevin Trenberth heads climate research at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. "We are certainly seeing climate change in action," he said. "This year has been exceptionally unusual throughout the United States."

So what does the future hold if the current capitalist mode of production is allowed to continue spewing its waste products into the environment? 

Michael F. Wehner, staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory sums it up: “It is important to know that the amount of climate change that we have experienced so far is very small to what is projected to occur by the middle and end of this century. By 2100, today's most extreme weather events will seem relatively normal.”

The present system is clearly not sustainable, whichever way you look at it. The good news is that mounting worldwide revolt against the effects of attempts to solve the financial and economic crisis provides the best chance for the convergence of a global movement against the out-of-control capitalist machine. Waiting for something to turn up is simply not an option.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

Climate change window closing fast

The chance to prevent runaway climate change is slipping away. Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil-fuel combustion reached a record high in 2011 and there is nothing to suggest the trajectory will change this year or in the foreseeable future

A 6.1% increase in CO2 emissions in countries outside the economies within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was only marginally offset by a 0.6% reduction inside the major economies,  according to estimates from the International Energy Agency.

The rise was driven by Chinese coal burning power stations which created a 9.3% increase, or 720 million tonnes more CO2 released into the atmosphere and by increased industrialisation in India where emissions rose by 8.7%. That makes India the fourth largest emitter behind China, the United States, and the European Union, overtaking Russia.

CO2 emissions in the United States fell by 1.7% due to a switch from coal to natural gas, an exceptionally mild winter, the recession alongside higher oil prices and fewer car journeys. The Obama government's rush to create new coal-fired power stations, to facilitate cheaper-than-oil energy generation, could quickly reverse that, however.

In the EU too there was a reduction of 1.9%, due to a cut in industrial production and a relatively warm winter. However, the EU is also set to turn this small reduction back by giving up on renewables and “rebranding” gas produced by fracking as “green fuel”. This is in spite of research showing that taking the production and burning process as a whole, fracking emits as much harmful greenhouse gas as coal, including large quantities of very harmful methane.

Per capita CO2 emissions in China and India still remain just 63% and 15% of the average within the advanced capitalist economies. The argument runs that, to achieve so-called climate justice, they must be allowed to increase emissions until they reach average levels.

Per capita increases do not, however, translate into higher energy use for the poorest people, who continue to struggle with light and heat. They represent rather the transfer of emissions from the consumer economies of the West to the manufacturing base in the East. The poorest in Asia and Africa will be the greatest sufferers from the impacts of climate change, as the elites in those countries grow richer.

However it is achieved, the science shows that to limit global temperature rise to 2°C above pre-industrial levels (a scenario that will itself bring dramatic changes to world climate) emissions must peak in 2017. IEA Chief Economist Faith Birol said the 2011 data provides “further evidence that the door to a 2°C trajectory is about to close".

China had made significant progress in slowing the rate of its increase, but this was not neither sufficient nor a quick enough reduction.

Coal accounted for 45% of total energy-related CO2 emissions in 2011, followed by oil (35%) and natural gas (20%).Therefore the way to achieve a rapid reduction is to cut use of ALL these fossil fuels, not only the most harmful. This could be achieved by a massive energy efficiency and energy saving programme, and by switching to renewables.  

There is no political will on the part of any governments to take the measures needed to achieve peak emissions in 2017. The drive to industrialise and ferocious competition in world markets, makes it impossible for them to co-operate to achieve it. A transformation in politics and democracy so that decisions are made on behalf of people and planet as a whole, rather than in the interests of “growth” and profits, is absolutely necessary. Without it, runaway climate change become unstoppable.  

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Durban's 'death sentence' for millions

The last-minute deal at the Durban climate summit was as believable as the climax of a reality TV show. Cheering, back-slapping delegates had just condemned millions to starvation and homelessness.

Any binding agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases must now wait until 2020. Negotiations will not begin until 2014, and will in effect start from scratch - as if the Kyoto protocol never existed.

All major polluters will be expected to agree to substantial cuts. But when it comes to it - will any of them agree to anything that limits profit-driven growth? Not as long as the corporations are calling the shots they won't.

Just to underline the point, the day after the talks concluded, the Canadian government abandoned the Kyoto treaty. They were not on course to meet their Kyoto target, and faced significant fines. Japan, Russia and possibly Australia, are likely to follow suit.

Now Canada can “focus on jobs and growth”, said the country’s environment minister. What he means is his government wants big oil corporations to go all out to extract huge deposits of oil from sand. This a high emissions process, that will also help lock the planet in to fossil fuel burning for the foreseeable future

As a result, the world is now on course for catastrophic outcomes. "Eight years from now is a death sentence on Africa," said Nigerian environmentalist Nnimmo Bassey, chairperson of Friends of the Earth International.

The International Energy Agency, in its annual outlook last month, said that without significant reductions in emissions over the next 25 years, there will be an average temperature rise of 3.5ºc.

The science is clear enough. Warming over 3°C will create feedback loops, causing runaway greenhouse effects:

• the Amazon rainforest starts to die back
• coral reefs die and are replaced by algae and sea grass
• irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet occurs
• release of methane hydrates in ocean floor sediments further adds to warming
• permafrost thaws, releasing huge amounts of greenhouse gases currently fixed.

So what is to be done? Well, there are still options available and it is not too late to act. Much of the greenhouse gas that will cause significant warming is already up there, and the effects are already being felt across the planet.

But if we introduce cuts in emissions starting now, it may be possible to hold warming below 2ºC. At the same time as emergency plans to cut emissions, massive resources could be invested in mitigation – developing drought-resistant crops; more effective water use; improving natural flood defences on coasts and river deltas; switching to sustainable farming methods; fair shares of land.

In the UK, that could mean local and regional People’s Assemblies developing their own action plans, and also sending delegates to a national Assembly that could plan, for example, to immediately:
• close London’s carbon trading exchange
• fund insulation grants and solar panels for all households where suitable
• bring rail, air and bus networks into not-for-profit ownership, slashing fares and working for an integrated transport system
• take cars out of city centres with park and ride, and create public transport/cycle-only boxes in the centre of cities
• establish car pool schemes and car sharing schemes
• set upper limits on total flight miles in and out of Britain and distribute them fairly through an air miles system
• halt airport expansion
• halt plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations
• launch a crash programme of renewable energy projects.

But the most urgent question we face is political. As long as profit-driven growth is the sole priority of government, nothing can change. But a global network of People’s Assemblies could quickly put together a binding agreement, and open the way for a new era of sustainable production to meet the needs of people and planet. Debating how to achieve this should become the focus for meetings and occupations up and down the country early in the New Year.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Kyoto II abandoned as corporates call the shots

Any attempt to reduce the risk of runaway climate change with a new international treaty to limit carbon emissions is off the table for the foreseeable future as corporate profits take precedence.

The next round of UN climate talks in Durban next week will be a waste of time, since the richest countries have already made clear in private they are not ready to even make a start on negotiating a binding agreement to replace the Kyoto protocol before 2016.

As former Bolivian UN climate change representative Pablo Solon says: “The Kyoto Protocol has many weaknesses, but to turn it into an empty shell or make it disappear in Durban would be suicide. The only responsible alternative is to preserve the Kyoto Protocol with an emissions reductions goal that allows us to avoid incinerating the planet.”

The Alliance of Small Island States, which represents countries that would disappear in a “business-as-usual” scenario say the delay is "reckless and irresponsible". Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA), warned that without an international agreement working by 2017 the chance to hold a rise in global temperatures below 2ºC “will be closed forever".

The failure to make a serious start on cutting emissions means global output of CO2 has already jumped again, rising by the biggest amount on record in 2010. The world pumped out about 564 million more tons of carbon than it did in 2009.

That's an increase of 6% a "monster" rise that is unheard of, says Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate the figures for the US Department of Energy.

As a result, the scenario for climate change is beyond than the worst case scenario outlined by scientists working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change only four years ago.

At the last round of talks in Cancun, developed capitalist countries promised to pledge emissions cuts (to be achieved between 2012-2020) that would limit warming to 2ºC. This rise in itself would mean millions of deaths from drought and flood, and putt some 20-30% of animal and plant species at risk of extinction. Many coastal zones and island states would sink below the waves and glaciers disappear entirely.

But the actual pledges made since Cancun would lead to an average increase in global temperature of around 4°C or more – a catastrophic level which it seems likely the ecosystem could not survive.

The complex impact of global warming on weather was highlighted this week in a new IPCC report. It warns that in a high emissions scenario “it is likely that the frequency of hot days will increase by a factor of 10 in most regions of the world” and that “heavy precipitation will occur more often, and the wind speed of tropical cyclones will increase while their number will likely remain constant or decrease”.

No measures are being taken to prepare for these problems – quite the opposite. More fossil fuels – the major contributor to global emissions – are being burned than ever before. No attempts have been made to support serious development of renewables. Air travel has contributed to the leap in emissions measured by the US Energy Department, and as far as manufacturing is concerned “from an emissions standpoint, the global financial crisis seems to be over,’ says Tom Boden, who chairs the US Energy Department’s carbon dioxide information analysis centre.

And that’s the heart of the matter: Capitalism and its political proxies at state level will pay any price to achieve growth. The only diplomacy that will achieve the kinds of cuts in emissions needed to halt climate change is the open discussion and debate taking place between global assemblies of free peoples. Liberated from the drive for profit, they will shift to a system of planned production for need, and start to try to repair the damage.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Triple whammy of warming planet, high prices and energy insecurity

In the most comprehensive study yet of the global energy market, the International Energy Authority (IEA) has warned that within five years the planet will be on course to breach the limit of 2ºC of global warming which is said to be a “safe” level.

Of course, it is just the only level that supine corporate-serving politicians would agree at the UN's climate talks. Millions of people are already feeling the effects of global warming - ferocious rainfall causing floods in Thailand, Sindh province in Pakistan, the United States, Spain and Italy – and at the same time widespread drought. With 2ºC higher temperatures, such extreme weather will be commonplace, along with rising sea levels.

Over the last decade most of the world's growing energy needs have been met by burning coal; now not only China but also the United States is committed to building new coal power stations. The IEA projection shows that keeping to this course, the use of coal will increase by 65% by 2035.

Four-fifths of the CO2 emissions that would keep to the 2ºC limit are already locked in. Even if governments deliver on their weak, non-binding, greenwash targets, the cumulative CO2 emissions over the next 25 years will likely create a long-term average temperature rise of 3.5°C. And if, as seems likely, they fail to meet their targets, we are looking at a catastrophic 6ºC rise.

"As each year passes without clear signals to drive investment in clean energy, the ‘lock-in’ of high-carbon infrastructure is making it harder and more expensive to meet our energy security and climate goals," said Fatih Birol, IEA chief economist.

This week's BBC Panorama programme, made a crude attempt to blame soaring energy bills on the government's modest (to put it politely) efforts to promote alternative energy from wind, tide and solar.

The programme was a complete fraud. According to Ofgem, recent fuel price increases, which have left hundreds of thousands in fuel poverty, are due to the energy companies passing wholesale market price increases on to consumers, whilst never reducing them when the market falls.

Panorama tried to argue that because renewables require investment, and because the government is making some of that investment, consumers are being hit by subsidies.

But why are subsidies needed? Surely it is in the nature of an industry that if changes to new technology are required, these are paid for by investment by the companies that will profit in the long term.

Not on your life! In reality, the big six energy companies in Britain, and others throughout the world, are on an investment strike. They will go on dragging profits out of old-style power stations as long as they can, adapting them to dirtier and dirtier fossil fuels and they will never put a penny into developing the alternatives.

Their goal is NOT a clean, secure energy supply - it is profit, and that's a fact!

And where there is an increase in world market prices for gas and oil - and these will be ever-steeper as fossil fuels become scarcer and harder to extract - the consumer must pay.

We are left with a triple whammy of a warming planet, high energy prices and growing energy insecurity.

"Without a bold change of policy direction, the world will lock itself into an insecure, inefficient and high-carbon energy system," said Birol, adding that there is still time to act but the window of opportunity is closing.

The only action open to us is to achieve such a transformation is to take energy generation and supply out of private ownership and place it into a not-for-profit social trust, with raw materials becoming part of a new global commons.

A democratic network of People's Assemblies could then agree, with the help of experts and the collectively-owned power generating firms, a transitional plan to reduce, and then replace, fossil fuels. That is the only way to cut emissions, end fuel poverty and ensure that the lights stay on.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Climate activists change course

There will be no Camp for Climate Action this year, and leading activists say this is in recognition of the world’s changing economic and political landscape.

After a lengthy meeting of camp activists, a consensus was reached and a statement issued which says:

“The near-collapse of the financial system; droughts in the Amazon, floods in Pakistan; a new government in the UK; a violent programme of unprecedented cuts; food prices rising and real incomes eroding; revolutions across the Middle East… This is all very different from 2005 when the Camp for Climate Action first met to spark radical action on the greatest threat to humanity, climate change.”

Climate Camp mobilisations, as well as the protests by students last year, have shown that there is nothing passive or deferential about young people in Britain. Their actions have put the trade union leaders to shame, exposing them as weak-kneed in the face of injustice.

Visiting the camp over the years, you could chart the deepening of people’s understanding of the source of the climate crisis. Year by year, people moved away from the idea that ordinary human beings and their consumerism are to blame, to a recognition that it is the capitalist economic system of production itself that is the root of the problem.

As the Camp’s statement says: “As the financial crisis unfolded we moved to directly targeting the root cause of airport expansion and coal-fired power stations: our economic system.” The 2009 camp was the high point, with a huge sign at the entrance on London’s Blackheath stating “Capitalism IS crisis”.

But at Blackheath, the question arose – can we overthrow the corporations DIRECTLY by targeting them with protests; or can we only create change that is truly transformative by bringing down the governments and STATES which maintain their rule of the transnationals that have gone about destroying the planet’s eco-systems?

Climate Camp answered that question with more of the same, culminating with the occupation of the RBS bank’s headquarters in Edinburgh. This protest simply did not rise to the political challenge people in Britain were now facing, with the election of a Coalition government hell-bent on imposing the cost of the crisis on the mass of ordinary people.

This is a government that, far from curbing the role of the corporations in response to the climate crisis, is extending their reach. Ministers took part in the Cancun conference’s decision to abandon any attempts to sign a replacement treaty for Kyoto. Privatisation and cost-cutting will drive down standards in the name of profit.

The Climate Camp’s statement continues: “This is a unique opportunity to work together with others to create a more co-ordinated, dynamic and stronger movement against climate change and its root causes. Now is a chance to team up with the anti-cuts and anti-austerity movements and play a crucial role in the revolutionary times ahead. Anything but co-ordinated action is doomed to fail.”

The revolutionary times are, in fact, here and now. The new generation that is leading the revolutionary upsurge in North Africa and the Middle East are driven by the impact of the global crisis, including climate change that has contributed to soaring food prices.

Climate campaigners championed People’s Assemblies during the protests at Copenhagen in 2009 . Hopefully, climate camp activists will now join the movement to establish a network of People’s Assemblies throughout Britain. Then we will not only challenge the power of the state to impose cuts, and the corporations that are wrecking the eco-system, but actually go on to build a sustainable alternative to capitalism’s destructive growth addiction.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Cancún farce puts the world at risk

Government officials meeting in Cancún, Mexico, have begun what the annual round of delay and betrayal that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) has become.

There is absolutely no sign of any compromise between delegates representing nearly 200 countries on the key issues that led to Copenhagen’s failure last December.

"We will not be able to negotiate a new treaty in Cancún, that much is clear," host nation Mexico's chief delegate Fernando Tudela admits. The best he hopes for is to “dispel mistrust”, “end the standoff”, “achieve confidence, unity and effectiveness”.

In other words – good public relations and image-building but absolutely no commitment to reductions in carbon emissions. The only area where progress may be made is in throwing money at the governments of poorer nations, supposedly to offset and mitigate the impacts of climate change. So politicians and officials will be bribed, whilst ordinary people will pay the price.

All hope of achieving an agreement on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions at these, or any other talks, has now been abandoned. This was confirmed when Japan stated its outright opposition to extending the Kyoto protocol – the binding international emissions cuts treaty signed in 1992.

Bolivia’s UN Ambassador Pablo Solon, condemned proposals known as REDD+ that would set up a market-based system to pay poorer nations to protect tropical forests. "Now they want to put a value on nature ... this is what got us here in the first place," he said adding that rich nations were claiming to take part in negotiating a successor to Kyoto without ever having even lived up to their legal commitments under the existing treaty.

At the summit in Copenhagen last year, the rich nations hi-jacked the meeting and transformed the FCCC process from planning a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, to be instead a forum for implementing a market-driven increase in global temperatures by 2ºC. Such an increase will lead to:
 complete destruction of the world’s coral reefs
 26 million people displaced by rising sea levels, hurricanes and cyclones
 300 million people at risk of hunger due to failing crops
 2.8 billion people without access to clean water.
 Spread of diseases such as malaria and Dengue Fever to new areas
 Mass extinctions in the Arctic with only 42% of the Arctic tundra stable.
 Greenland ice cap melted
 Loss of the majority of the remaining major forests of China, Europe and America.

And as meteorologists have recently explained, temperatures are rising even faster than previously predicted, and a 4ºC increase is entirely on the cards in the case of capitalism being permitted to continue business as usual. That would mean:
 Sea levels rise swamping some island nations entirely and 70% of Bangladesh, Florida, Netherlands and the south of England
 40 million people round Shanghai and 60 million around Calcutta displaced
 Melting of the Siberian permafrost, releasing millions of tons of greenhouse gases and speeding up the warming process even further.

Bolivian President Evo Morales will attend the final week of the meeting, to promote the Cochabamba Accord on Mother Earth Rights, which stated that capitalism is the structural cause of climate change, and is inherently unsustainable.

He is quite right to do so, but perhaps he’s is doing it in the wrong place. NGOs and campaigners have launched a campaign calling for “ten thousand Cancúns”. That’s the last thing we need! Instead we want 10,000 people’s assemblies, in every country, challenging the right of undemocratic governments and global corporations to continue driving the eco-system to the tipping point where life on earth becomes unsustainable.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

The struggle for clean water

Photo: Survival International

Voting on a proposal put forward by Bolivian ambassador Pablo Solon, the United Nations General Assembly voted yesterday to declare that “safe and clean drinking water and sanitation is a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights.”

So it was fitting that on the same day in London, police were out in force to prevent protesters gate crashing the AGM of the British-based mining transnational Vedanta. The corporation is accused of fatally polluting the local water supply around its aluminium refinery in Lanjigarch, Orissa state in India.

A petition signed by 30,000 people was handed in to the meeting calling on shareholders to stop Vedanta’s local subsidiary, the Orissa Mining Corporation, opening a bauxite mine to feed the refinery, in the nearby Niyamgiri hills.

The development threatens the very survival of the Dongria Kondh indigenous community who live there. A report from Amnesty quotes a member of the community saying: “The hill is our god and the earth our goddess. Between the two we have the rains and the water. Those wanting to mine here will slowly take over this. Where will we go then?”

An estimated 884 million people don’t have safe drinking water and about 1.5 million children under the age of five die each year from diarrhoea and other water-related causes. Dirty water kills more children than AIDS, malaria and measles together. Three and a half million people die each year as a result of contaminated water.

One of the United Nations-sponsored Millennium Development Goals agreed in 2001, was to halve the number of people who cannot reach or afford safe drinking water and halve the number who do not have basic sanitation. But in reality, the opposite is happening.

As the effect of global warming increases, water is becoming more than ever a scarce and expensive commodity. Some 10 million people in West Africa are facing starvation right now as a result of a long and worsening drought.

New figures show that global temperatures are soaring to their highest-ever level this year. The Met Office Hadley Centre, drawing on the work of more than 100 scientists from more than 20 institutions, has compiled ten indicators of temperature. “They provide, in a one place, a snapshot of our world and spell out a single conclusion that the climate is unequivocally warming,” the Met Office reports.

Clean water must be a right, but like all others it will need to be fought for in the teeth of opposition from the corporations and the rich. Rights can’t be left as words on paper, as all the Development Goals for Africa have been.

It is absolutely right to use any legal recourse to defend rights, including working through the United Nations. Ultimately, however, power rests in the hands of corporations and even governments have to kowtow to them. This week, for example, the government of Uruguay has been forced by Phillip Morris to revisit their strict no-smoking laws because the death-dealing corporation has made a complaint to the World Trade Organisation.

In our Manifesto of Revolutionary Solutions, we tried to put the concept of rights into a revolutionary context. We propose that human rights must expand beyond the concept of the individual to societal rights – the right to decent housing, health care and so on. This connects with the idea of “Mother Earth Rights”, proposed in the World People’s Declaration on Climate Change: for what is nature but the body of human beings, whose health is our health.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Creative accounting blocks climate action

Rich nations could go on increasing carbon emissions by up to 8% if they exploit gaping loopholes in a new draft agreement which is going to the next UN climate summit in Mexico in December.

An analysis compiled by the Bolivian government and published by the United Nations at talks in Bonn this week shows that using a series of accounting tricks, rich nations could carry on business as usual.

Selling surplus carbon credits created when the Soviet economies collapsed in the 1980s is one ruse. Using carbon markets to “offset” emissions and adopting new rules giving credits for palm plantations on areas cleared of virgin forest would also do the trick.

Christian Figueres, the new UN climate chief, admitted: “The pledges that we have on the table are not sufficient to meet the 2ºC pledge made in Copenhagen, and certainly not enough to guarantee the survival of the most vulnerable and poorest."

Without the loopholes, rich countries would have to reduce emissions by 10-14% below 1990 levels by 2017 to meet the targets agreed at Copenhagen last December. With them, they could increase emissions by between 4% and 8% above 1990 levels and still meet Copenhagen’s already shameful targets.

Bolivia’s UN ambassador Pablo Solon warned: “The new data shows a frightening chasm between what the science says, what the people have asked for and Earth needs, and what rich countries are saying they are willing to do."

Friends of the Earth is one of the organisations that will be excluded from the climate summit in Cancun in November because the major economies don’t want any kind of public pressure and debate around the talks. FoE international climate change campaigner said this week: "The proposals on the table are riddled with loopholes so its not surprising that current targets will do nothing to protect the world from climate disaster."

So now it is clear – even limiting warming to 2ºC is not an honest target for rich countries. Their servility to profit-driven growth and to the power of markets, could lead to 4ºC and more.

The absence of serious commitment to change was underlined this week by an International Energy Authority report, showing that fossil fuel subsidies rose to $557bn in 2008, from $342bn in 2007. Renewable energy innovators struggle to get any help, but subsidies allow fossil fuel to be consumed at less than market price.

There is a mood of gloom amongst some climate campaigners, who fear that the impact of the economic slump, spending cuts and unemployment, and the propaganda onslaught by climate change deniers, means people no longer care about climate change.

But a survey by Cardiff University shows that 78% of British people think the climate is changing, a substantial base to build on. Four out of ten thought that the threat from global warming is exaggerated, but 42% disagreed. And a similar survey in the US shows that public concern about the issue is increasing.

The UN Climate Change talks have become a diversion from real political action aimed at halting the rise in emissions, and a front for continued inaction. Qumrul Chowdhury, who is lead negotiator for the least developed countries' block, asked in Bonn what would happen if the talks dragged on beyond Mexico, warned: "It will be tragic, a holocaust. I warn all the world that it will be at the expense of 1 billion people. We cannot afford to lose this battle."

He is right. But what is needed is a bold approach that makes the connection between the economic crisis which is devastating people’s lives across the world, the climate crisis and the crisis of democracy, where the views of the majority count for nothing.

For even if 100% of people in Britain wanted action on global warming, they could not get it within the national and global status quo of capitalism.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

System change, not climate change!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Achieving climate change justice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Too many people? No - too much capitalism!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Penny Cole and Paul Feldman