Written by W.T.
Whitney Jr. and first published at People's World
Dealing with
climate change, the United Nations held its “Conference of the
Parties”—COP26—in Glasgow Nov. 1-13. Unfortunately, nothing happened likely to
slow down progression toward a catastrophic outcome. The nations failed to
reach even a non-binding agreement on reducing fossil fuel emissions that
disturb the climate. In the wake of the conference, the theme “system change
not climate change” gains new relevance.
With smooth
words obscuring a grim reality, a New York Times reporter
described “a major
agreement…calling on governments to return next year with stronger plans to
curb their planet-warming emissions.” But then comes the admission: COP26 left
“unresolved the crucial question of how much and how quickly each nation should
cut its carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases over the next decade.”
The
conference’s hesitant approach originates from past difficulties in reaching
collective and binding agreements. In recognition of such, the 2015 COP meeting
ruled that henceforth nations need only submit goals for voluntarily reducing
emissions.
The delegates
at COP26 decided to renew a previous agreement, still unfulfilled, to provide
poor nations with an inadequate $100 billion annually to assist them in
“transition…recovery…and adaptation.” Rich nations were urged to double their
funding by 2025. COP26 did not address phasing out coal production.
Prior to the
gathering, publicity centered on “Keep 1.5 (degrees C) alive.” The slogan
expressed determination not to allow dangerous levels of atmospheric warming to
exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, as promised by the 2015 COP meeting.
A conservative estimate foresees a 50% probability
that, at the current rates of emissions, greenhouse house gases will spike to
that level in just 15 years.
Climate
scientists associated with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) periodically issue Assessment Reports. Part I of the current version,
reporting on the “physical science basis of climate change,” predicts that
“Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century.”
Consensus exists that temperature elevations of the order of 3°C
will lead to
exponentially accelerating planetary changes that will be irreversible.
The dim
prospect of nations and the international community mobilizing effectively has
unsettled all quarters of society. References to short-sightedness, disregard
for the truth, opportunism, and immorality are standard. What’s in order for
the protection of humanity is a gigantic rising-up of the concerned and
afflicted, but it’s not on the horizon.
The movement
already in place for applying ecological principles to the protection of nature
has promise, though. For decades, there’s been theorizing, experimentation, and
agitation for environmental sustainability. But these efforts have taken place
predominately in well-resourced northern regions of the world.
Meanwhile,
masses of people, everywhere, but mainly in poor regions of the world, are
fearful, hurting, and/or dying. Clearly, they would be protagonists in a
prospective movement for the survival of humans and all living things. Just as
certainly, the specter of the mass mobilization that is needed would elicit
reaction from the entitled classes.
Young people
worldwide have organized, demonstrated, and spoken out. They protested at
COP26. Interviewed, they project anger and commitment, but also despair and
discouragement. Young people in the Global South are experienced in mobilizing
against their political and ruling classes. In the United States, their
affinity for the Bernie Sanders campaigns and attitudes expressed in opinion
surveys show a new orientation towards socialism.
No wonder: U.S.
young people face debts, fears, a deteriorating climate, and politics that look
to be non-functional.
The U.S.
response to climate change differentiates according to social class. Journalist
and geologist Julia Rosen suggests that “climate
change could bring welcome
warming and extended growing seasons to the upper
Midwest, Canada, the Nordic countries, and Russia.”
Rosen adds that “Even within wealthy countries, the poor and marginalized will
suffer the most.”
With their
money, properties, and connections, well-to-do people in rich countries could
wall themselves off from turmoil and victims. New arrivals escaping from homelands
undone by desertification, drought, floods, and food shortages might find
themselves rejected, stigmatized, and even manipulated—as pawns for dividing
native-born workers.
The main class
divide occasioned by the climate crisis shows up in the difference between
rich, industrialized nations and the poor, historically exploited regions of
the world. The industrialized G20 nations have produced 80% of
greenhouse gas emissions.
At COP26,
strong voices highlighted the predicament of peoples up against rising sea
waters, the near impossibility of producing food, and/or intermittently
intolerable heat. COP26 was silent on hearing vigorous demands for reparations,
expressed as “loss and damage.”
Bangladeshi
climate scientist Saleemul Huq offered reflections: “The most
vulnerable communities in the most vulnerable countries…get just 2% of that
global funding to tackle climate change…. This social injustice is a problem
that rich people have caused. Every religion teaches us to be fair and
moral—and that it’s immoral to hurt the poor.”
The class
divide underlying this anguish finds expression through a thought experiment
looking at linkages. First, there is capitalism; then ever-expanding industrial
production, as required by capitalism; then the burning of fossil fuels, as
required for production; then more burning for more production, then more
emissions, and then unstoppable trouble.
The IPCC
scientists provide corroboration. Parts II and III of their current Assessment
Report won’t be released until early 2022. One is about impacts, the other
mitigation. Key parts of each have been leaked.
A section of
a Monthly Review summary of
Part II states that “We need transformational change operating on processes and
behaviors at all levels: individual, communities, business, institutions, and
governments. We must redefine our way of life and consumption.”
Part III calls
for a “turn to demand-side strategies, exploring cutbacks in energy use and
across all economic sectors, as well as aggressively pursuing conservation and
low-energy paths.” Quoted, the IPCC scientists assert that, “The character of
social and economic development produced by the nature of capitalist society
[is]…ultimately unsustainable.”
The scientists
would alter capitalism’s basic assumptions. Do they want to get rid of
capitalism? Maybe not yet. They are following the lead marked out almost 30
years ago by the visionary Marxist scholar Kenneth Neill Cameron. In his
book Marxism,
a Living Science (International Publishers, 1993), Cameron
foresees “a world racked by natural disasters of social origin,” involving the
climate. He notes that “there is only one way known to slow down and then
eliminate these disasters, namely by phasing out the gases that cause them.”
Options for
action exist. Progressives, socialists, ecosocialists, Marxists—a whole range
of democratic forces—envision tasks that, together, are essential for
sustaining humanity, protecting the climate, dealing with the environmental
crisis, and building a massive, people-centered political movement.
Multifaceted
programs in this vein often referred to as a Green New Deal, are outlined in
Mark Brodine’s book Green
Strategy, in John Molyneux’s article in
Climate & Capitalism, and in a report by
Sean Sweeney in New Economic Forum.
A complicating
factor is that capitalists aren’t the only parties potentially inconvenienced
by climate-friendly proposals for cutting back on production capacities and
consumer spending. Working people under capitalism, dependent on selling their
labor, crave economic stability and predictability. For them, meddling with
capitalism for the sake of the climate might be disconcerting and weaken their
enthusiasm for all-out climate repair.
That endeavor,
if or when it proceeds, would likely carry with it the appendage of a Red
Scare. Old outbursts would reappear, like “Better dead than red!” For that one,
perhaps it will be updated to: “Better they die than we are red.”
W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine.
