The NewAge Editorial, November 6, 2009There is the biggest stake: investment, private financing for reducing emissions in the underdeveloped countries. There are investors with trillions of dollars willing to get engaged in the climate crisis business. So, there are corporations, lobbyists, brokers, a section of politicians, a section of media. The climate crisis business-walas, however, need a framework to secure their investment and return, writes Farooque Chowdhury
CLIMATE crisis is not beyond politics and geopolitics. Market is there in climate crisis. Profit is there also. So, the stakes are. And, the stakes are of trillions of dollars. It is the stakes of the rich. People have a stake there in climate crisis. It is their life. And, this life has not been designed and determined by them. It has been imposed on them. They have been and are being compelled to live in it, in a life of hunger, poverty, ignorance, uncertainty, insecurity. The hunger is not only of food; the poverty is not only of resources; the ignorance is not only of formal education; the uncertainty is not only with unemployment; the insecurity is not only with shelter. They are poor in terms of energy, travel, entertainment, luxury, water, food, air, dwelling space, atmospheric space, information, rest, technology, organisation, power, squandering and indulgence, climate, and all other aspects of life. Here lies the seed of contradiction: those enjoying and squandering much and those having nothing or near to nothing to squander. It is the old ‘story’ of two worlds: of the rich and of the poor. Climate politics stands on this earth of contradiction, a contradiction between having a life of too much and a life of having least. The contradiction, representing the stakes of the social groups and sections of capitals, gets reflected in geopolitics. So, market is overpowering science.
The ice extent in the Arctic Sea is changing at an unexpected rate. The rate of change in ocean acidification is also unexpected. With the receding of ice, opening up of new shipping routes and extraction of new resources turning profitable the Arctic is now a new region for competition. Capital is taking a stand, stubborn and uncompromising, as capital, as a whole, is going through crisis, a crisis of diminishing prospect for profit in manufacturing sector and a debacle in speculation, in its casino economy. So, the prospect in Copenhagen appears bleak. Sunita Narain, from the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi wrote on October 25 in India Environment Portal: ‘It is now more or less clear that the world will not be ready with an ambitious legally binding agreement at Copenhagen, which sets interim targets for industrialised countries or the funds and technology for participation of developing countries. Already the Kyoto Protocol, which sets binding targets for the industrialised countries is being bashed.’ She posted another comment three days before that: ‘As the clocks tick to Copenhagen, how low is the world prepared to prostrate to get climate-renegade US on board? Is a bad deal in Copenhagen better than no deal?’ Patrick Bond from South Africa wrote point blank: ‘Global climate governance is gridlocked and it seems clear that no meaningful deal can be sealed in Copenhagen on December 18’ (MRzine, October 25). Michael Levi in his article ‘Copenhagen’s Inconvenient Truth’ says the odds of signing a comprehensive agreement in December are vanishingly small.
Climate crisis reality is now reflecting warmth of conflict of interests. Advanced capitalist countries are standing opposed to poor underdeveloped countries. Europe is standing opposed to the United States. China, India and Brazil are being questioned by the US. The Bangkok negotiations, wrote Bond, ‘confirmed that Northern states and their corporations won’t make an honest effort to get to 350 CO2 parts per million. On the right, Barack Obama’s negotiators seem to feel that the 1997 Kyoto Protocol is excessively binding to the North and leaves out several major polluters of the South, including China, India, Brazil, and South Africa.’ Rich countries are opposed to rich countries. The deadlock in climate crisis negotiation was stark since long. To some, Copenhagen should make a breakthrough while a few others consider it as interim. These two approaches represent two economic interests. The Chinese are planning to talk their national policies while the Japanese have announced a target for emissions cuts. Despite the ‘symbolic value’ of the memorandum of understanding between India and China in mid-October it signifies the two major players’ seriousness in finding out an alternative.
Tension is increasing between Europe and the US. Veiled threats of bringing in tariffs were made from the US side. A number of European negotiators complained that the US was trying to change the rules of the game too much. Europe has a plan to put up on the order of 2 to 15 billion euros a year by 2020. Europe expects similar numbers from the US. But they know that the Americans cannot show up in Copenhagen with similar numbers. There are problems in the US domestic politics. The American people are not still willing to accept proposals for providing finance and other support to poor, underdeveloped countries to help them cut their emissions. According to a major US poll, there is a sharp drop in public concern about global warming. The American politicians are struggling with healthcare and unemployment issue. ‘[I]n the US,’ Bond wrote, ‘the balance of forces is fluid. On the far right, the fossil fuels industries are intent on making Obama’s climate legislation farcical – and have so far succeeded. In the centre, the main establishment ‘green’ agencies – such as the Environmental Defence Fund and Natural Resources Defence Council – are ploughing ahead with carbon trading strategies, hoping to salvage some legitimacy for Obama.’ The US demands commitment to action from developing countries. There is also difference in stakes among the Europeans. The French strategy is protectionist.
There is the biggest stake: investment, private financing for reducing emissions in the underdeveloped countries. There are investors with trillions of dollars willing to get engaged in the climate crisis business. So, there are corporations, lobbyists, brokers, a section of politicians, a section of media. The climate crisis business-walas, however, need a framework to secure their investment and return. They also calculate risks that include political and currency. The seekers of profit from the climate crisis are asking for political assurance to secure their business with crisis on a long-term basis along with highest expected return, loan guarantee for investment in low-carbon technologies, feed-in tariffs for renewable energy, and many other privileges and mechanisms to make investment lucrative. There is the issue of energy subsidy in poor countries. Then, there is the question of governance of the climate crisis capital: who will govern it? Will it be the World Bank? Who will monitor the flow of the climate crisis capital? Will it be the OECD? Reparation for the North’s climate debt to the South is a major issue. Africa, it is assumed, will take a stand in Copenhagen.
Now it is known to many that climate crisis policies in many countries have been and are being designed by corporations. Their profit is dependent on fossil fuel, its peak, renewable energy and its technology, etc. Many climate crisis lobbyists are from electricity, coal, aluminium and mining industries. ‘The influential fossil fuel industry has consistently tried to undermine political action on climate change. Using industrial front groups such as the US “Global Climate Coalition” and the “International Climate Change Partnership”, oil, coal and car interests have targeted the credibility of climate science and climate models, and scare-mongered about the possible economic and employment impact of reducing CO2 emissions. They have repeatedly tried to deflect attention away from the West’s responsibility to clean up after the mess it has created, ignored the cost of ‘no action’, and have moved to suppress the development of clean and climate-friendly alternative solutions.’ The weight of political influence of these ‘greenhouse mafia’, as dubbed by many, depends on respective economic weight. The neo-liberals have their own approach to reap from the climate crisis: privatise, hand over everything to market, and market now tells: accumulate profit by accumulating emissions, then, go for efficiency. Market still has not found any incentive to build low-carbon economy. It should not be forgotten that profit of one industry in a country often is dependent on the emission reduction target in another country. Clive Hamilton has discussed this in his book Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change. Australia’s primary concern is to protect its coal industry. It gets profits from China.
The politics with climate crisis most of the times revolves around the issue of emission level, percentage of its reduction, its baseline, etc. The rich must reduce and must take a hard and binding target for emission reduction so that the poor get an atmospheric space. Between 1990 and 2006, CO2 emissions of the advanced capitalist countries increased by 14.5 per cent. Between 1980 and 2005, the total emissions of the US were almost double that of China and more than seven times that of India. The world cannot afford a long-term target (2050) based on a shifting baseline year. The South has the right to develop with strategies for low-carbon growth. Many advanced capitalist countries are trying to change climate convention that allow them to continue their high per capita emission and secure more of the atmospheric space, put emission limit on non-Annex-1 countries, partially putting the burden of adapting to climate crisis on non-Annex countries. The advanced capitalist countries have already occupied more than a fair share of the atmospheric space. Their purpose is to sharpen own economic competitiveness in markets that they enjoy and control. Their tool is further liberalisation of market. They try to control discourse on climate crisis, and misinform and mislead media. There are a number of examples of inaccurate reporting in the media. Mystifying science with climate-related questions and obscuring details are a few of the tactics of these countries. Powerful governments and corporations use ‘divide and rule’ tactics to undermine the voices of the poor, underdeveloped countries.
‘The question before the world is’, writes Narain in the book Climate Change: Politics and Facts, ‘how to recommit the industrialised world to serious reduction in its emissions?’ ‘International negotiations on climate change,’ she continues, ‘to put it politely, stink. The mood is … belligerent.’ The much-touted CDM is, Narain says, ‘a convoluted, cheap and corrupt mechanism.’ Bond says one of the reasons behind ridiculing Kyoto ‘by serious environmentalists is its provision for carbon trading rackets which allows fake claims of net emissions cuts. Since the advent of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, the Chicago Climate Exchange, and Clean Development Mechanism projects and offsets, vast evidence has accumulated of systemic market failure, scamming, and inability to regulate carbon trading.’ There is the need, according to Bond, to rapidly transcend Kyoto’s weak, market-oriented approach. Narain suggests to set up a global trading system based on equal per capita entitlements, or agree on a carbon tax on the developed world, so that the fund can pay for national actions to mitigate emissions, including avoiding emissions from deforestation, agree on the fund for adaptation, based not on charity, but the right to development of the poor and the victims of climate change. Equity issues rightly remain at the forefront of the negotiations. ‘Equity’, she says, ‘is the first prerequisite for an effective climate agreement. So, the world must accept equal per capita emission entitlements so that the rich reduce and the poor do not go beyond their climate quota.’
The demands, in this perspective and articulated by Climate Justice Action, are leave fossil fuels in the ground; reassert people’s and community control over production; re-localise food production; massively reduce over-consumption, particularly in the North; respect indigenous and forest peoples’ rights; and recognise the ecological and climate debt owed to the peoples of the South and make reparations. The climate crisis has taken the character of political problem with many political variables. The geopolitics of climate crisis compels many to fear that climate change negotiation is in for a train wreck towards Copenhagen. Bond then expects ‘a wave of courageous direct-action protests against climate criminals and the prospect of “Seattling” Copenhagen… on December 16.’
Farroque Chowdhury occasionally translates. His recent book is The Age of Crisis
