UK Government Desperate for Trump Visit, but London Says No, No, No

On same day that US President, Donald Trump, announced that he will not after all be coming to London next month, to open the country’s new embassy in the UK, he demonstrated exactly why he is not welcome in this diverse city. The Washington Post reported that Trump, in a speech to US senators, called African nations and others such as El Salvador and Haiti ‘shithole countries.’ He questioned why so many immigrants from these countries are allowed into the US, rather from (white) countries like Norway.

Trump’s remarks drew immediate criticism in the US, with widespread condemnation as being racist in nature. The outburst was also condemned by the United Nations and the African Union (AU), with the AU saying it was ‘clearly racist.’

Trump denied he used these exact words but did admit using some ‘strong language’ but democratic senator, Dick Durbin, who attended the meeting confirmed that the reports were entirely accurate. 'He said those hate-filled things and did so repeatedly,’ according to Durbin.

It doesn’t come as exactly a surprise that Trump would say such things, with his track record of support for right-wing, racist organisations. Trump failed to condemn white supremacists in the US who drove a car into a crowd of anti-racist protesters and his tweeting of praise for the neo-Nazi UK organisation Britain First. He tried to ban Muslims entering the US and of course has promised to build a wall on the US/Mexico border, to keep Mexicans out of the US. I could go on, the list of Trump’s racist diatribes is as long as your arm.

No surprise either then that Trump is not the sort of person that Londoners want polluting the city’s fine record on racial and ethnic integration and openness to the world generally. This is best symbolised by Sadiq Khan, the son of a Pakistani Muslim immigrant London bus driver, who is now the mayor of London.

Khan commented that Trump had ‘finally got the message’ that he was not welcome in London, after hearing of the cancellation of the visit. Khan said that if the visit had taken place there would have been a ‘huge’ demonstration in London, and implied that Trump had been scared off by the prospect of the backdrop a mass demonstration against him. Khan is right, there would have been a big protest had this visit gone ahead, Trump is very unpopular with Londoners.

Khan’s comments were immediately attacked by his immediate predecessor as London mayor, Boris Johnson, now the foreign secretary in the present Tory government. Johnson himself is no stranger to making racist controversial remarks, calling black people ‘pickaninnies with watermelon smiles,’ in the past.

True to form Johnson, using unusual words tweeted, ‘we will not allow US-UK relations to be endangered by some puffed up pompous popinjay in City Hall.’ For those unfamiliar with the word popinjay, the dictionary defines it thus:

‘a vain or conceited person, especially one who dresses or behaves extravagantly.’  

This doesn’t sound like Khan in any way, but is a reasonably accurate description of Boris Johnson himself, but he is so vain and arrogant that this probably didn’t occur to him, who is commonly thought to be an upper class twit in the UK, or at least that is the most polite description I can think of.

But the reason that Johnson and the rest of the British government are so desperate for the visit to go ahead, at some point, is that they hope to conclude a favourable trade deal with the US, to replace the likely loss of our access to the European single market, after we leave the European Union. A craven posture for sure, and frankly, embarrassing, but the only thing that seems to matter to this government, is tearing the country away from our closest neighbours. If we have to suck up to racists in the process, then so be it, it appears.

The visit may still take place at some time, and in some way, that avoids widespread protest, especially in London. When George W Bush visited the UK at the height of the Iraq war, the arrangements for the visit were carefully planned. Bush was secretly taken to an ‘old English pub’ in the middle of County Durham in the north east of England, but a demonstration in London did go ahead anyway, but maybe with less impact.

If the visit does happen at some stage, then London will protest, and I will be there. But at least this has saved me having to turn out on a cold February day this year. The message from London to the US President will be ‘Trump, no, no, no.’ Which reminds me of the great, late, London born and Jewish singer, Amy Winehouse’s hit from 2006, ‘Rehab.’ A video of the song is reproduced below. 

Tories aim to portray themselves as Inclusive and Green – Are they having a Laugh?

With apparent mystery surrounding the true number of members that the Tory party has now, with new Chair of the party, Brandon Lewis, admitting they did not know. He puts this down to records being kept at local level, and not being nationally held, but did not dispute that the membership total had plunged to a rumoured 70,000.

In September last year, Conservative Home, the website for Tory activists, estimated Tory party membership at around 100,000, after a small spike in new members after the EU referendum, which appears to have been more than cancelled out by remain voting Tories leaving the party.

These are the latest available membership estimates for UK (mainland) political parties:

Labour - About 552,000 as of June 2017

Conservatives - About 149,800 as of December 2013

Scottish National Party - About 118,000 as of August 2017

Liberal Democrats - About 103,000 as of September 2017

Green Party of England and Wales - 55,500 as of March 2017

UK Independence Party - 39,000 as of July 2016 (almost certainly less now)

Plaid Cymru - About 8,300 as of 2017 

Although membership of all of the main political parties has been declining for decades, there was a surge in the membership of the SNP after the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, followed by a Green surge in England and Wales in the 2015, prior to the general election, and a huge surge in Labour’s membership during and after the party’s leadership election later that year. A yearning for something different, particularly from younger people, it seems.

By contrast, a report by Tim Bale's Mile End Institute at Queen Mary University of London suggested at least 44% of Tory party members were over 65 and 71% were male.

All of which explains the spin around the recent government (non) reshuffle, with the Tories wanting to ‘look like the nation they seek to represent.’ The facts do not support the hype though.

According to Left Foot Forward, just five of Theresa May’s 22 Cabinet ministers are women, the same number as before the reshuffle. Men still account for almost 70% of ministers. May’s new Cabinet contains also only one ethnic minority minister, and just one who is openly LGBT.

According to the Sutton Trust, 34% of Theresa May’s new cabinet were privately educated – an increase from her first cabinet in 2016 (30%) – while 24% of the new cabinet attended selective state schools.

Clearly, the Tories are trying to spin themselves as in some way diverse, but the truth is nothing much has changed in the make-up of the government, and this is just a public relations exercise.

Meanwhile, Priti Patel, the former International Development secretary, writing on the Conservative Home website says that there is an ‘essential need for us to become a grassroots movement once again.’ The Tories have not been anything like a grass roots movement since the 1950s, when they had around 3 million members, so this looks to be a tad over ambitious.

James Cleverly, the new deputy chair of the party suggests, somewhat bizarrely, writing on the same website, that the Tories can take a leaf out of the online game Candy Crush’s book, because it is popular, especially with younger people. They are truly getting desperate.

But it’s not just new members that the Tories are trying to woo, they are looking for new voters as well. This is what is behind Theresa May, the prime minister, making a speech about the environment today. Michael Gove, the Environment secretary, has been the warm up man in this attempt to soften and broaden the Tories appeal, with a series of speeches and announcements on green issues over the last couple of weeks. They must have been watching Blue Planet 2.  

This tactic worked to some extent when David Cameron was Tory leader, when he was trying to detoxify the party’s image. Remember the ‘Go Green, Vote Blue’ slogan, which was immediately dropped when the Tories got into government, and derided as ‘green crap?’ At the same time, this government was slaughtering hundreds of thousands of badgers, making it easier for businesses to get planning permission for fracking, and harder to get for wind farms. The Tories continually break EU limits on clean air and beaches. Will anyone fall for this cynical ploy again?

I’ll tell the Tories what they need to do to attract new and younger support. Drop the hard Brexit nonsense, scrap tuition fees, build some truly affordable housing, fund the NHS properly and reduce the voting age to sixteen.

Of course, they won’t do any of these things but the Tories problem runs deeper, they are just not perceived as ‘cool’ and they never will be. There are pretty good comedians though.    

UK Government Reshuffle – Rearranging a Few Deck Chairs on the Titanic

After all of the hype in the media, that the prime minister, Theresa May, was going to ‘re-boot’ her Cabinet, the reshuffle of ministers on Monday was a drab affair. Apart from two Cabinet ministers going by choice, one for health reasons and one because he’d largely had enough of it, it was mostly an exercise in the same set of clowns staying put in their ministerial roles.

The reshuffle was also meant to be about the Tory party sharpening up its act on appealing to voters. Thirteen new party posts of vice chair were introduced to champion various policy areas. It remains to be seen if this will make the Tories more appealing. But it was undermined by several social media gaffe’s during the day, most notably Tory central office tweeting out the news that Chris Grayling was to be the new party chair, when he wasn’t. The tweet was quickly taken down. It did at least provide some entertainment on an otherwise uneventful day.

The normally staunchly Tory supporting Telegraph newspaper began referring to a ‘chaotic’ reshuffle, and the dye had been cast.

There was some drama when Health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, declined to be moved to the business department, where May intended swap him with Greg Clarke. Apparently, Clark was kept waiting for an hour and half whilst Hunt pleaded to be able to stay put at health. May was eventually persuaded and Hunt gained an add on to the health brief in social care.

Sajid Javid also got an add on to his title, with housing joining local government and communities, although it was already a part of the department, but overseen by a junior minister. A cosmetic change that is meant to show the government is taking the housing crisis seriously, which it isn’t really.  

The other thing this event was meant to be about was shoring up the prime minister's authority, but this was far from achieved. Not only did Hunt refuse to move from health, but Justine Greening refused to move from education, not unsurprisingly turning down the offer of work and pensions secretary in the process, and leaving the government. At last some drama.

Greening was apparently upset by media briefing against her in the last week, and suspected Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, was behind the move, because of her views on Brexit (she supported remain in the referendum). It had certainly been trailed in the media that May was irritated by Greening blocking May’s grammar schools policy. Most reports forecast Greening was for the chop.

Greening pointedly mentioned carrying on working for ‘social mobility’ as a MP, in a tweet after she resigned.

May trying to look tough though, has a habit of back-firing. When she first became prime minister she fired Nicky Morgan, George Osborne and Michael Gove. Morgan is of course one of the Tory Brexit rebels and does her best to hinder May in general. Osborne, now outside Parliament but as editor of the Evening Standard, has a powerful media weapon which he doesn’t shrink from using to criticise May and her government. Gove is back in the Cabinet weaselling away, behind May’s back. 

Greening is the MP for Putney in south west London, but only has a slender 1500 or so vote majority, it is also a strongly remain (in the EU) voting constituency, like most of London. I would say she is pretty much guaranteed to join the Tory Brexit rebel MPs group in Parliament now. The rebels have already inflicted one defeat on the prime minister, and she has just bolstered their number in Parliament.

Only eight days into the new year, and Theresa May has botched another political initiative. She clearly isn’t cut out for the role of prime minister, but she staggers on from one crisis to the next, the latest being in the health service. I predict a number of public service scandals breaking out over the year, because the government is paralysed, by the lack of a Parliamentary majority and a deep division amongst its MPs and ministers. It can’t do anything other than Brexit, and they are not making a good job of that either, for the same reasons.

More governing incompetence and national humiliation, for the sake of unity in a political party with less than 100,000 members, which continues to drag the country down uncaringly. The new year begins as the last one ended, a complete shambles.  

Obituary - James O'Connor Pioneering Ecosocialist (1930 to 2017)

James O’Connor in 1978 (photo courtesy of the UC-Santa Cruz Digital Collections)

Sadly, James O’Connor, the American ecosocialist, died in November last year. He was an important figure in ecosocialist tradition. There are threads of the philosophy going back to Murray Bookchin in the 1960s and William Morris in the nineteenth century, and much further back in history. But O’Connor who emerged in the early 1980s as one of the first writers/thinkers to self-consciously consider themselves to be ecosocialist from a philosophical standpoint, and start to build a movement to make the theory a reality.

He developed the thesis of the second contradiction of capitalism, that is, it degrades the thing that it needs to sustain economic growth, the environment.

Written by Salvatore Engel Di Mauro and first published at Entitle Blog as part of a series of reflections.

We mourn the sudden loss of a visionary and highly influential thinker, James Richard O’Connor, co-founder with Barbara Laurence of Capitalism Nature Socialism and the Center for Political Ecology. O’Connor was a rigorous, indefatigable intellectual and a committed Polanyian Marxist activist. His thoughts have reached and shaped the minds of thousands of people, including mine, and I trust thousands more will benefit from his insights.

He wrote on a wide range of subjects of great political consequence and of continuing currency and urgency. This includes explaining, in his early works, the relationship between capitalism and the state, as well as clarifying linkages between imperialism and economic processes. The Fiscal Crisis of the State is but one of the better known of his writings that emerged from this line of research. It remains a classical piece, and one that should be read even more widely and translated into more languages than it is.

O’Connor also contributed to great theoretical strides for all of us in CNS through his latter endeavors on the ecological crisis, especially in the late 1980s. This, to me, is the germinal intellectual turning point that oversaw, with the establishment of this journal, the confluence of left-leaning ecological thought with a diversity of leftist anti-capitalist approaches, including variants of Marxism and feminism.

The creative and illuminating outcomes of this confluence and, to a larger extent, interweaving of disparate currents are among the lasting legacies bequeathed to us through O’Connor’s efforts. The development of his Second Contradiction thesis is but one shining example of what came about through such confluence of approaches, and it continues to be an inspiration (or source of debate) for many.

O’Connor’s formidable intellect was complemented by political commitment. This was reflected in, among other actions, his involvement in local environmental struggles. Part of this kind of activity was consumed by writing pamphlets accessible to a wide readership, including for the Students for Democratic Society’s educational campaigns in the 1970s and for various environmental and social policy activist groups in the 1980s.

His political commitment was also represented by his networking and organizing with intellectuals across continents to bring to the attention of North American audiences news, perspectives, and analyses of social and environmental struggles from different parts of the world. He facilitated such international information flow by creating a network of journals from Catalunya/Spain, Italy, and France, based on reciprocity and free manuscript exchange. This is one major way in which this journal came to have international breadth and reach, as well as benefit from the input of thinkers from many countries.

James O’Connor struggled in an inimical intellectual world to keep Marxist perspectives alive while critically reconstructing them to overcome their historical inadequacies, especially with respect to ecology. In all this, he did not mince words, maintained a clear political line, yet kept this journal from falling under any particular tendency, including his own. Farewell, Comrade O’Connor, intrepid navigator of still very rough political waters, and infinite thanks for your intellectual guidance and inheritance.

UK Joining TPP – Bad for Trade, Workers and the Environment?

News comes this week that the International Trade secretary, Liam Fox, is exploring the possibility of joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), when the UK leaves the European Union (EU). This trade deal is being renegotiated at the moment, since Donald Trump, the US president, pulled his country out of the deal.

The deal is now called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), with the eleven nations shown on the map above covering a similar sized population to the EU (around 500 million people), with participating countries all having a close proximity to the Pacific Ocean or South China Sea, as the name suggests.

As Fox has said, we will have to wait and see what the new, without the US, deal looks like, but he has been in preliminary talks with these nations. Would this be as good a deal as we have with the EU? Well many people seem to think not.

Currently, the UK exports only 8% of its total exports to these countries, which to put it into context, is less than the UK exports to Germany (11%) and the whole of the EU (44%). Some of these countries have very small economies, again to put it into context, New Zealand has a smaller economy than Greece. Some of the other countries involved, although with large populations, like Malaysia and Vietnam, are also quite poor. Other nations have shown an interest in joining like South Korea and Sri Lanka, but on the face of it, without the US participating, this doesn’t look too promising for trade.

Of course, if the UK joined, trade would increase as the partnership aims to promote trade between its members and to reduce tariffs to facilitate more trade, but it is hard to see it as in anyway equivalent to the UK’s current status in the EU. There are cultural differences too with the UK, with many of the countries involved, which tends to make trade less successful. There has been no clamour for this from UK businesses, which perhaps tells its own story.

The unions, in the UK and in TPP member countries are also against this trade deal as they fear it will lead to job losses.

The British Trade Union Congress’s (TUC) website has this to say:

Unions in the 11 countries currently still involved TPP are steadfastly opposed to the deal, because it would provide little in the way of protections for workers' rights. While workers in Vietnam might benefit because their rights are already so limited that even the safety net of ILO core labour standards would be an improvement, none of the 11 countries involved have better rights at work than the UK does currently.

TUC general secretary, Frances O'Grady, said such a move would be "scraping the bottom of the Brexit barrel." She points out that "trade unions around the world have opposed this deal because it allows labour abuses, it puts public services at risk and it gives too much control to corporations."

TPP has its own tribunal system where corporations can sue national governments, for things like not allowing public services to be run by private companies.

Then there is the environmental impact of the UK trading with such distant nations, rather than adjacent European countries. I have been unable to find data on the carbon emissions produced by the transportation of goods around the world, but you don’t need to be a genius to figure out that trading mainly within Europe has to lead to much less carbon being emitted than trading with these far away countries, in some cases, as far away as you can get from Britain.

New technology like 3D printers, will reduce the transportation of goods in the future admittedly, but not everything is going to use this technology. Take food and drink for example. If we are to import food produce from places like Australia and New Zealand, or wine, then this will have to be transported thousands of miles, with an obviously big increase in transportation emissions. In the case of fresh food, this will probably need to be transported by air, which causes the most damage to the environment.

I expect many in favour of Brexit don’t believe in man-made climate change, so will dismiss this argument, but anyone who understands these things, even in the most basic fashion, will know that it will make climate change worse, simple as that.

I wonder how those Green supporters of Brexit will square this one? I’ve not come across anyone making this argument from the Green side, in favour of the leaving the EU or not. Maybe a pro-Brexit Green can explain to me how this is good for the environment?   

The Future of the European Left and the EU

It must be the end/beginning of the year, resolutions and all that, together with quite volatile political events, but it seems the broad Left, and by that I mean the liberal and radical Left, in Europe, has been pondering the EU’s future role, and the Left’s strategy in it. Green themes come into it, too.

In part of a series of Op Ed’s over the last week or so, The Guardian has published its ideas for the future of the UK and in the final piece on Wednesday turned its attention to the EU. It is in line with the previous editorials in the series, and not unsurprisingly it is unashamedly liberal, leftish liberal, in content. Whilst giving a nod to some of downsides of the EU, it largely praises the EU for being a positive force for good.

Take this line as an example:

‘There is nothing quaint about saying that to safeguard Europe, and make the EU thrive, is simply to contribute to a better world.’

The piece also calls on the EU to ‘truly reclaim a mission of social justice,’ and to play more of a role shaping world events, especially in the era of Trump’s presidency of the US, and right wing populism in Europe. Here climate change and the environment are particularly mentioned, together with ‘social protections,’ civil rights and more democratic engagement. The EU has a chequered history on all of these issues, of course, but it has also undoubtedly done some good as well.

I would guess that most Green party members and voters would broadly agree with The Guardian’s view on these matters, but not all. Admittedly, from December 2016, Paul Kingsnorth, a writer and former deputy editor of the Ecologist, espoused a different green type of approach to the EU. Writing on the US Counterpunch website titled ‘Brexit Reconsidered: a Modern Day Peasants’ Revolt?’ he describes a very different Europe.

One which has a culture of homogenisation, centralisation, control and profit, and Kingsnorth cries in despair, ‘where are the radical greens?’ Greens he says are mostly ‘crying into their muesli about Brexit.’

Brexit hovers over UK politics at present, but the Left in continental Europe has also been thinking about what kind of EU it wants after the years of austerity being imposed, mainly on Southern European nations, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy.

Walter Baier, a Vienna based economist and former National Chairman of the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) from 1994 to 2006, writing at Transform Europe, looks at thinking on the EU by the more radical Left elements on the continent. He puts the re-think on the Left down to collapse of the Eastern European socialist regimes and the adoption of neo-liberalism by social democratic parties during the 1990s.

In particular, Baier examines ‘Plan B’ supported by French presidential candidate in 2017, J. L. Mélenchon, and DiEM25, an initiative spearheaded by Yannis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister.

DiEM25’s ideas for a reformed EU, within existing EU Treaties, is largely supported by the leadership of the UK Labour and Green parties, and formed the basis for the Remain strategy in the 2016 referendum followed by these leaders. It amounted to a remain in the EU and reform platform, but in the end did not cut through to the voters as desirable.

DiEM25 proposes a New Deal for Europe, which contains policy proposals and strategies based on four principles:

All Europeans should enjoy the right to basic goods (e.g. nutrition, shelter, transport, energy), paid work while receiving a living wage, to decent social housing, to high quality health and education, and to a sustainable environment (environment included here too).

To harness the wealth that accumulates in Europe and turn it into investments in a real, green, sustainable, innovative economy.

The EU must implement policies for sharing the dividends from digitisation and automation amongst all its citizens.

Macroeconomic management should be democratised fully and placed under the scrutiny of sovereign peoples. 

Mélenchon’s A Plan B in Europe recommends a complete break with the existing EU Treaties and basically starting again. The plan also has four main principles:

Nation states are considered as leverage in the European struggle with the EU.

The withdrawal from EU Treaties should in combination with ‘negotiations on a new framework for the EU, but if this failed to work, France would unilaterally withdraw from the Treaties.

The French people would be given the final choice on staying in a new EU or withdrawing completely, in a referendum.

Plan B’s in different countries would not necessarily be same as in other EU nations who decide to follow France’s lead.

Plan A seems to me to be more realistic than the DiEM25 proposals, with the EU unlikely to reform radically from within existing structures, and so to facilitate a ‘new radical EU,’ starting again is probably necessary. I am not advocating not having some kind of cooperative union in Europe, and the UK being part of it, but the large, remote and bureaucratic entity it has become, does seem to have run its course.

I’m also not saying that I prefer the UK leaving the existing structures of the EU, which I expect will be counter-productive and play into the hands of the UK populist right, some of whom are in government. But I do think that the EU could be made much better and more responsive to the needs of European citizens, and so if that means starting from square one, so be it.    

Climate Change - COP23: From the Gap to the Precipice

Written by Daniel Tanuro and first published at International Viewpoint

The Twenty-Third Conference of the Parties Signatory to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate has just concluded in Bonn, Germany. It was an intermediate meeting between COP21 in Paris in 2015 and COP24 in Katowice (Poland) in 2018.

As we know, Paris resulted in a so-called ‘historic’ agreement concerning the level of global warming not to be exceeded at the end of the century (compared to the pre-industrial era): “stay well below 2°C and continue efforts not to exceed 1.5°C.”

Katowice (COP24) will be a more important step than Bonn: the signatory countries will have to say how and to what extent they will raise the level of their ambitions in order to bridge the gap between the greenhouse gas emission reductions at present planned in their national ‘climate plans’ on the one hand, and on the other the reductions that would be necessary overall to achieve the global objectives put down on paper in Paris. Belgium, for its part, does not have a climate plan worthy of the name.

Every year, the United Nations devotes a special report to the challenge of the ‘emissions gap’. According to the 2017 edition (Emissions Gap Report 2017), the gap is “alarmingly large.” That is putting it mildly: the climate plans (or Nationally Determined Contributions, NDCs) of countries represent only one third of the reductions in emissions that would have to be made to stay below a 2°C rise in temperature… and (but the report does not say so) less than a quarter of the reductions that would have to be made to stay below 1.5°C.

Time Running Out

Now, time is running out and the timetable is becoming tighter. The report says: “If the emissions gap is not filled in 2030, it is extremely unlikely that the target of not exceeding 2°C will be achieved. Even if the current NDCs were fully realized, the carbon budget for 2°C would be 80 per cent used up in 2030. Based on current estimates of the carbon budget, the carbon budget for 1.5°C will already be used up by 2030.”

As a reminder, the ‘carbon budget’ is the amount of carbon that can still be sent into the atmosphere with a probability X of not exceeding a rise of Y°C at the end of the century. The probability of 2°C and 1.5°C carbon budgets mentioned in the Emissions Gap Report is 65 per cent. (As a parenthesis: that’s not much: what do you do if you are told that the plane you are travelling in has a 65 per cent chance of not exploding in flight?)

Let’s go back to the question of deadlines. For the gap to be closed by 2030, measures must be taken by 2020 at the latest – in three years – and they must multiply by three emission reductions in the NDCs. The year 2020 is the first date scheduled in Paris for the adaptation of NDCs to bridge the gap.

To prepare for this crucial negotiation, the governments have planned a process called “facilitative dialogue” that begins in 2018. The UN report on the gap writes in black and white: “The facilitative dialogue and the 2020 revision of the NDCs are the last chance to close the emissions gap in 2030.”

“The last chance to bridge the gap” really does mean the last chance to stay below 2°C of global warming at the end of the century. As a reminder, global warming of 2°C will most likely – and irreversibly – involve an increase in the level of the oceans of about 4.5 metres at equilibrium…

Given the extent of the efforts needed to be in line with the Paris objectives and the extremely short time frame in which these efforts must be decided and effectively implemented, we should be talking not about a gap, but about a precipice.

Bridge the Gap?

Is it possible to bridge the gap – and not to fall over the precipice? Once again, the answer to this question is twofold: technically, yes. In the context of capitalist productivism, no.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted in 1990 in Rio, set the goal of not exceeding a “dangerous level” of global warming. It took twenty-five years and twenty-one COPs to decide to quantify this dangerous level: not to exceed 2°C and “continue efforts (sic) not to exceed 1.5°C.”

Given this slowness, it is necessary to be naive or very optimistic to think that two years will be enough now for the governments of the world to agree on the measures to be taken to multiply their efforts by three in order to respect the objective of 2°C, and by four to respect that of 1.5°C (in fact, the one that should absolutely be reached). Twenty-five years after Rio, global emissions continue to rise.

Admittedly, they increase only slightly, (0.9 per cent, 0.2 per cent and 0.5 per cent respectively in 2014, 2015 and 2016)… but they increase… whereas they should decrease very strongly and very quickly! It is certainly positive that the United States is very politically isolated on the climate issue, on the one hand, and on the other that some states of the Union (California in the front line) openly challenge Trump and his clique of climate criminals. Nevertheless, the U.S. withdrawal weighs on the negotiations.

This withdrawal will make it even more difficult to bridge the gap. The Nationally Determined Contribution of the U.S. consisted of a promise to reduce emissions by 2 gigatonnes of CO2. These 2 Gt are equivalent to 20 per cent of the very insufficient effort made by the NDCs as a whole. They are therefore to be added to the measures to be taken within three years.

It should also be noted that the U.S. is withdrawing without really withdrawing: present in Bonn, they continued – as under Obama – to put the brakes on the green fund for the climate. As a reminder: $100-billion a year that the developed countries have pledged to make available to the South from 2020, for the adaptation and mitigation of climate change, for which the rich countries are mainly responsible and the poor countries the main victims.

This green fund was decided at COP16 in Cancun in 2010 but the goal of one hundred billion is very far from being reached (to put it mildly). Seizing the occasion, other countries – the European Union in particular – have used the pretext of the U.S. attitude to avoid answering the concrete questions of the countries of the South and NGOs: How much money? When? In what form (donations or loans)?

The truth is that, from COP to COP, world capitalism continues to bring humanity closer to the precipice. Faced with this alarming situation, they try to reassure us by picking out figures on the increasing share of renewable energy in the ‘energy mix’. This increase is indeed very fast, and it will accelerate in the coming years, because the electricity produced by renewables is globally less expensive than the energy produced by burning fossils.

However, these reassuring speeches mislead us, because the indicator to be taken into account is the decrease in emissions, not the rise in the share of renewables. But as long as we do not question growth, therefore the race for profit, the share of renewables can increase at the same time as increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and that’s exactly what has been happening for about fifteen years.

How will capitalism get out of this huge problem? For Trump and the criminal cretins of his kind, the question does not arise: the catastrophe that is coming is either natural or a punishment that God is inflicting on humanity for its depraved mores. Let us pray, my brothers… And in both cases, woe to the poor!

But the others, the spokespersons of capital who do not take refuge in climate-negationism, who know that the threat is real, terrible and that the catastrophe is already in progress, what will they do to try to meet the challenge? What will they do when they realize that it is impossible to bridge the gap because capitalism cannot do without growth? They will join in with the geo-engineering in the hope, all the same, of avoiding tipping over the precipice.

Significantly, for the first time, the UN report on the emissions gap includes a chapter on negative emissions technologies, i.e. technologies that would remove carbon from the atmosphere “just in case” emissions reductions continue to be insufficient to meet 2°C – 1.5°C. It is more and more obvious that the reservation “just in case” is a formula of style to avoid revealing the brutal truth: despite all its technical and scientific means, humanity is heading for disaster because of the race for profit imposed by a minority of the population.

But let us go back to the negative emissions technologies. Some of these technologies are worthy of sorcerers’ apprentices. This is particularly the case for bio-energy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS), in other words the production of electricity by combustion of biomass as a replacement for fossils, with capture of CO2 and geological storage of it.

For BECCS to have a significant climate impact, it would require huge amounts of water (3 per cent of fresh water used for human purposes today) and very large areas devoted to industrial energy crops. Clearly, we must choose between the plague and cholera: either competition with food production, or a terrible destruction of biodiversity (I mean: even more terrible). Or both at the same time.

We are told that other technologies are soft: afforestation, reforestation, soil management conducive to carbon storage, restoration of wetlands, mangroves, etc. 

That’s right, they are soft in themselves. But experience shows that soft technologies in themselves can have very harsh social effects when they are driven by the pursuit of maximum profit and market expansion. The capitalist logic already shows how indigenous peoples are cut off from the forest in the name of the climate (REDD, REDD+, etc…). This can only be accentuated within the framework of a generalization under capitalist management of ‘soft’ technologies with negative emissions.

It’s the System

However, within the capitalist framework, soft technologies will not be enough. They could be sufficient, but they will not be sufficient in this context because they are less interesting from the capitalist point of view than BECCS. In fact, BECCS offers markets to heavy industry and allows capital to perform a dual operation: sell electricity, on the one hand, and on the other be paid by the community to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

Interesting in this respect: we learn from a paragraph of the Emissions Gap Report that it is still possible to stay below 2°C of global warming without resorting to bio-energy with carbon capture and sequestration. Why, then, do more than 90 per cent of the transition scenarios developed by scientists rely on the deployment of this technology? Because most scientists who work on scenarios consider that the law of profit is a natural law, as inevitable as the law of gravity.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing to expect from the COP negotiators. Their soothing and self-satisfied discourses are only meant to lull people to sleep. Rescuing the climate in a framework of solidarity depends solely on our ability to fight and, through our struggles, to lay the foundations of an alternative social logic to that of profit.

Daniel Tanuro is a certified agriculturalist and eco-socialist environmentalist, writes for La gauche, (the monthly of the LCR-SAP, Belgian section of the Fourth International).