Fires within the Arctic Circle

All these news are alarming: ‘Sweden Wildfire: Blistering heatwave sparks fires within Arctic Circle as Europe boils’.
‘Two major forest fires raged out of control Monday on either side of Athens, killing at least 50 people, burning houses, prompting thousands of residents to flee and turning the sky over Athens a hazy orange from the smoke.’
‘At least 44 people have died across Japan as extreme heat waves continue to grip the east-Asia nation.’
‘Sweden faces “extreme” risk of even more wildfires’.
‘Denmark, southern Norway and northern Finland are experiencing extreme heat.’
Aircraft and helicopters were battling the forest fires near Athens.
‘Intense heat wave to build up across western Europe’.
‘Sweden heatwave: hottest July in (at least) 260 years’.
The further a reader goes through the news coming from Japan in the east to Sweden in the west the more concern creeps in:
What’s happening?
Is it the Arctic Circle? Is there any error in the reports?
Are the numbers of dead 44 in Japan and 50 in Greece? Is the info correct?
Media reports are almost unbelievable as none of these are coming from the ‘cursed’ south, the hemisphere that fails to provide its citizens with adequate arrangements for a safe life. Two of the countries in the cited news — Sweden and Japan — stand on a strong technological-industrial base, and spend a lot of money behind arms.
All the news cited say:
‘Wildfires are raging in Sweden gripped by the worst drought in 74 years. The fires have broken out across a wide range of territory north-west of the capital of Stockholm as the hot, dry summer continued to stir up the flames. A number of communities have been evacuated and tens of thousands of people have been warned to keep windows and vents closed to prevent smoke inhalation. Rail services have been disrupted.’
‘The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency has called the recent fires the country’s most serious wildfire situation of modern times.’
‘The severity has caused the government to appeal for help from other countries. Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway and Poland have responded by sending water-spreading helicopters and planes, and emergency personnel. Carl XVI Gustaf, king of Sweden, in a statement said he was “worried” about the fires raging in 59 locations in Sweden.’
‘Sweden is experiencing an unprecedented drought and soaring temperatures which have reached the highest figures in more than a century. Other than a negligible 13 millimetres of rain in mid-June the country has not seen any rain since May. Farmers are struggling to feed their animals. The heat also arrived early.’
‘The lack of rain in Sweden is now so bad that the government is even considering state assistance for farmers struggling with the conditions.’
‘Dangerous heat will threaten millions of people across Europe this week with no lasting relief in sight.’
‘A heat wave is building up from Spain to Scandinavia.’
‘Locations that may have their highest temperatures of the year this week include Madrid, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Stockholm.’
Japan
ACCORDING to CNN, out of the 44 that have died since July 9, 11 lives were claimed on Saturday alone, with temperature remaining around the 38 degree Celsius mark in central Tokyo.
‘The temperature rose past 41 degrees Celsius in Kumagaya, the highest ever recorded temperature in Japan. According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, the temperatures recorded have been around 12 degrees higher than the average temperatures.’
Greece
‘GREECE is seeking assistance from the European Union to battle forest fires.’
‘A state of emergency has been declared in the eastern and western parts of greater Athens as fires raged through pine forests and seaside towns on either side of the Greek capital.’
‘The blaze has created such thick smoke that the main highways between the Peloponnese and the Greek mainland have been shut down.’
The real curse
CLIMATE crisis deniers will confidently claim: these are (1) mere accidents; (2) these are exceptional incidents due to weather pattern; and (3) these should not be cited as examples of anomaly in the climate system.
But, shall not the citizens in the countries experiencing unusual incidents in the nature search for answers to the fires within the Arctic Circles and sudden surge of death due to increased temperatures? Citizens in the ‘cursed’ South are concerned as they are experiencing unusual pattern in the nature, and their coping capacity is almost non-existent.
This reality is pushing many to search for the origin of the crisis in climate.
A few years ago, Fred Magdoff, professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont and adjunct professor of crop and soil science at Cornell University, and John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, discussed the issue in an essay — ‘What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism’.
They write:
‘For those concerned with the fate of the earth, the time has come to face facts: not simply the dire reality of climate change but also the pressing need for social-system change.’
To them, knowledge is essential for survival: ‘Knowledge of the nature and limits of capitalism, and the means of transcending it, has therefore become a matter of survival.’
On climate change, they write:
‘Climate change does not occur in a gradual, linear way, but is non-linear, with all sorts of amplifying feedbacks and tipping points. There are already clear indications of accelerating problems that lie ahead.’
Fred and Foster raised the issue of living standard:
‘[T]here are biospheric limits, and that the planet cannot support the close to 7 billion people already alive (nor, of course, the 9 billion projected for mid-century) at what is known as a Western, ‘middle class’ standard of living. […]
‘A global social system organized on the basis of “enough is little” is bound eventually to destroy all around it and itself as well.’
They raised the issue of economic system:
‘[M]ost of the critical environmental problems we have are either caused, or made much worse, by the workings of our economic system. Even such issues as population growth and technology are best viewed in terms of their relation to the socioeconomic organization of society. Environmental problems are not a result of human ignorance or innate greed. They do not arise because managers of individual large corporations or developers are morally deficient. Instead, we must look to the fundamental workings of the economic (and political/social) system for explanations. It is precisely the fact that ecological destruction is built into the inner nature and logic of our present system of production that makes it so difficult to solve.’
On solutions, they wrote:
‘“[S]olutions” proposed for environmental devastation, which would allow the current system of production and distribution to proceed unabated, are not real solutions. In fact, such “solutions” will make things worse because they give the false impression that the problems are on their way to being overcome when the reality is quite different. The overwhelming environmental problems facing the world and its people will not be effectively dealt with until we institute another way for humans to interact with nature — altering the way we make decisions on what and how much to produce. Our most necessary, most rational goals require that we take into account fulfilling basic human needs, and creating just and sustainable conditions on behalf of present and future generations (which also means being concerned about the preservation of other species).’
They concluded by proposing a system:
‘If there is to be any hope of significantly improving the conditions of the vast number of the world’s inhabitants — many of whom are living hopelessly under the most severe conditions — while also preserving the earth as a liveable planet, we need a system that constantly asks: “What about the people?” instead of “How much money can I make?” This is necessary, not only for humans, but for all the other species that share the planet with us and whose fortunes are intimately tied to ours.’
Current developments in the areas of temperatures and wildfires lead us to consider the ideas presented by Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster. The countries — Sweden and Japan — stand on capitalist system. Greece is another case — a capitalist country, a victim of capitalist plunder, a country whose population has been burdened with the load of capitalist anomalies, debt, bankers’ dictation and austerity. Sweden and Japan are part of the world imperialist system while Greece is entangled in the system. The three countries’ present situation shows their level of preparedness to face the climate crisis. With so much resource in their command, Japan and Sweden are failing to cope with the crisis. This is the system’s — capitalism’s — failure.
A closer look will find:
The amount of profit and the amount of money spent for research on weapons system development are larger than amount of money spent for research to face climate crisis.
Profit enriches a few while climate crisis affects all — millions and millions of people.
This situation leads to the question: Isn’t it the time to question the governing system — capitalism?

Climate Crisis: All The Bad News, From The Southern Ocean To The US To Food To Kiribati

After the news of drought in the US the climate crisis is continuing with all the bad news from around the world, from the Southern Ocean to food to Kiribati. At the same time, a climate crisis skeptic scientist now admits: he was wrong. The developments in the realm of science are pushing back capital from its climate crisis denial gamble as capital is taking toll from the entire Earth.

Scientists now know the way huge quantity of carbon is sucked and locked deep into the Southern Ocean. This knowledge puts them in “a much better situation” to identify impact of climate crisis. Citing a study by British and Australian scientists, news agencies report the latest finding. The Southern Ocean study has been published in the Nature Geoscience journal. (“Scientists unlock ocean CO2 secrets key to climate: study”, Reuters and “Scientists find CO2-sucking funnels in Southern Ocean”, AFP)

Oceans absorb carbon dioxide emissions – about a quarter of the CO2 on Earth – and the oceans thus curb the pace of climate crisis. However, scientists are now worried that global warming could disrupt this natural process by changing wind patterns and ocean currents. “Climate change will definitely interact with this process and modulate it”, Matear of Australia’s state-funded Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation told Reuters.

The Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica is the largest of ocean carbon sinks s its share of “consumption” is about 40% of mankind’s CO2 absorbed by the seas. Its “in take” is equivalent of 1.5 billion tones of CO2 a year, which is more than Japan’s annual GHG emissions. At a depth of about 1,000 meters carbon can be locked away for hundreds to thousands of years. But till the study, scientists were not sure the way CO2 gets there after dissolving into surface waters.

The scientists, according to the news agency reports, found that a combination of winds, currents and eddies – big whirlpool-like phenomena about 100 kilometers in diameter on average – work together to create carbon-sucking funnels that create conditions for carbon to be drawn down deep into the ocean to be locked in. A few of these funnels, at different locations and not uniformly distributed, are 1,000 km wide. In the Southern Ocean there are five such funnels. The wind is the main force that pool down surface water deep into the ocean while eddies counterbalance a different effect of strong winds that of releasing stored carbon by violent mixing of the sea. As part of a natural cycle these currents in areas also send back carbon to the atmosphere.

The findings put scientists to further vital questions. One of the scientists involved with the study put the questions: The finding “does seem to be good news, but the thing is what will be the impact of climate change on eddies? Will they stop, will they intensify? We have no idea.”

Assumptions being made, according to the agency reports, are as climate crisis is affecting the nature and changing ocean currents, intensifying winds or stark temperature spikes would effect the Southern Ocean eddies.

Then, the US-drought-news is annoying.

Scientists have made a dismal forecast, Beverly Law writes citing Nature Geoscience, for the coming century: The chronic drought conditions that hit the western US in the 2000-2004 period, the strongest in 800 years, will become normal conditions. As withering vegetation released CO2 into the atmosphere and was also unable to store carbon as it would if it were healthy the 2000-2004 drought period reduced carbon storage by an average of 51% across the western US, Canada, and Mexico. The vegetation in North America normally is able to absorb about 30% of the carbon emitted across the region.

Science Daily said: Areas in the US west, already dry, are to turn drier with more extreme periods causing damage to ecosystem to be followed by climate-induced mortality of forests. Areas of forest may turn into shrublands or grasslands. Extreme drought will adversely affect water availability and vegetation, and will make serious impact on carbon sequestration.

News on food follows the drought-report.

Increasing grain prices have again put the world’s poorest people at risk. The price jump could have long-term detrimental impact for years.

A severe drought, as a Reuters report said, in the US Midwest has cut projected grain yields dramatically. Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan are experiencing dry conditions while Europe has already gone through an excessive wet weather and India has seen a below average start to the monsoon. These have created worries over world crop yield. Wheat prices have jumped more than 50% and corn prices more than 45% since mid-June. Prices for soybeans also have increased almost 30% over the past two months and nearly 60% since the end of last year.

Citing Marc Sadler, head of agriculture risk management at the World Bank, the Reuters report said the situation is “more complicated” than in 2008. With increased planting in 2009, the increased rice and wheat prices fell sharply at that period.

The WB on July 30, 2012 said: The bank is monitoring the situation closely so it can help governments. “We cannot allow short-term food-price spikes to have damaging long-term consequences for the world’s most poor and vulnerable”, Jim Yong Kim, the bank president, said in a statement. He spoke of measures including school feeding programs, conditional cash transfers, and food-for-work programs. As medium- to long-term measures, Kim said: “[T]he world needs strong and stable policies and sustained investments in agriculture in poor countries.”

However, the WB officials stressed there is no indication of any major grain shortages resulting from the reduced harvests this year. The bank is keeping its hopes on lower prices for oil, fertilizer and shipping than in 2008, which, they hope, will ease the cost of importing food and planting next year’s crop.

The bank’s planned support will include policy advice, increased agriculture and agriculture-related investment, fast-track financing, risk management products and work with the UN and private voluntary groups.

But, the WB president probably has missed the power-play capital engaged in speculation is going to make in the food market, the plunder lumpen lackeys of world capital is going to make in the crisis ridden respective home markets, the hostile role private capital is going to play with food speculation, the wars and civil wars capital has instigated in countries is going to play in the scarcity-market. And, there is politics of private capital that shape state policies all the time. Moreover, private capital, its parts competing with each other, doesn’t allow stable policy and proper implementation of the policies. However, it sounds nice as there is a virtual admission: Intervention, school feeding and FFW programs, is needed; everything can’t be left away to private capital all the time.

News from a geographically tiny land is also annoying:

A number of ground water sources in Kiribati, the low-lying country of 32 coral atolls over 1.35 million square miles of the Pacific and struggling climate crisis and sea level rise, has got contaminated. Around 100,000 inhabitants of Kiribati are facing water shortage problem, which is creating poor hygiene and sanitation, and this in turn is increasing child mortality rate. Citing Catarina de Albuquerque, UN special rapporteur on the right to water and sanitation, AFP reported. (“Child deaths soar in Kiribati due to lack of water”, July 26, 2012)

The UN envoy noted that rising sea levels had contaminated some sources of ground water.

In a statement issued during a trip to the island-country, Catarina said: The child mortality rate in Kiribati is the highest in the Pacific. The international community, particularly the countries most responsible for climate change, has obligation to help Kiribati address its water issues.

Along with these news of annoyance there is news of confession:

Richard Muller, climate crisis skeptic physicist, writes in the New York Times: “Call me a converted skeptic... humans are almost entirely the cause.” He continued: “My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project... Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.” He writes: “These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change […] that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming.”

Muller co-founded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project three years ago to debunk global warming findings. There was $150,000 grant from the arch-reactionary Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation for his work.

It’s now clear that money power is losing ground to scientific facts. The money capital spent over the last decades for denying climate crisis is enormous. The pool of scientists and lobbyist it engaged in the corridors of political power is unimaginable. The brain it engaged for designing propaganda material and mind-manipulating tools is beyond imagination. Resources to fight poverty, lack of safe water, diseases like AIDS, cancer, etc. often appeared peanut compared to resources and intellectual energy capital engaged to deny climate crisis. But, now, capital is losing ground to scientific facts. It’s failing to make science totally subservient. It shows limitations of capital’s destructive and conspiratorial power.

Questions like how, what, when, why, who, where to the incidents mentioned above will lead any inquisitive mind to the answer: Capitalism at the root of all these (mis)incidents and (mis)developments. For example, how has the Southern Ocean gone disturbed? What are the reasons that created the disturbance? When it began? Why the activities that have created the disturbance were initiated and who initiated? Similarly, the same questions can be put forth in cases of the US-drought, the precarious condition of the Kiribati people, the current world food market. And, the vital question should be raised: Is there any connection between the incidents spread over a wide area of the world, from the southern corner to the north? A careful, well-informed mind will find the answer: Capitalism.

Developments in the areas of climate crisis and science show capital has:

1. Disturbed and distorted every sphere and every corner of the world taking all living entity in the entire planet to the brink of extinction.
2. Tied all corners of the world with the bondage of crisis, one affecting, influencing, aggravating the others, and thus has created a complex web of crises.
3. Made adverse impact, which is the cause of all sorts of instability in areas ranging from ocean floor to food to politics. Even, capital can’t secure its class rule, which is gradually getting rejected by the peoples, losing acceptability, facing questions and mistrust, which in turn takes away all sorts of logic and rationale for the system.
4. No single technical, mechanical, isolated approach can save the planet from the threat of extinction the planet is facing.

Facts from broader life and facts related to capital’s character will gradually unfold before the eyes of peoples in all lands. People in all lands are learning from their experiences in daily life.

Weather Of Wrath And Climate Crisis Deniers

It’s not that the weather is out of its joint. It’s behaving in its normal pattern. In a period of crisis, apparently erratic pattern is the normal. This crisis-normal pattern signifies the crisis. Usual-normal or expected-normal weather pattern would have nullified the climate crisis claim. But the “wise” climate crisis deniers can claim that the weather is wishing the globe in an erratic, abnormal way, which is just occasional.

There are rare moments in the world history, when major world players simultaneously, in the same week, in the same day, experienced bad weather. The recent weeks and days have found them having similar weather-experience in the US, UK and Russia.

In Krasnodar, southern Russia, a recent heavy flooding caused by torrential rains has brought a death toll of more than 100. Many residents climbed trees and roofs. This type of flood is unusual in memorable history in the region.

Muddy water flowed through streets and homes in the town of Krimsk. At some places in the town, the flood water rose to rooftops. Boats plied through the town streets. One report said of seven meters of water in a town. In Novorossiisk, a major Black Sea port, the severe weather compelled to suspend loading of oil on to tankers.

Recent flood brought by torrential rain has created havoc in many parts of the UK. The flood has brought death. The Yealm burst its banks. Homes are flooded. A number of homes had 1-2 meters water inside. The country has been alerted with more than 200 flood warnings by its environment agency. Now, there are flooded homes, road closures and badly disrupted public transport system. Farmers have been advised to move livestock from low-lying fields and ensure that animals had access to food and shelter.

Parts of the US, from the western Rockies to the Midwest and eastern part, experienced heat wave, sweltering temperatures and monstrous thunderstorms in recent weeks. There is loss of life. Temperatures reached record level in more than 4,500 locations including Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Lansing hit 103°, the hottest day in Michigan’s capital city since record keeping began in 1863. The O’Hare International Airport also experienced 103° on July 6, 2012.

The country has already experienced Colorado wildfires and hurricane within the last few weeks. Storms knocked out power in Michigan, West Virginia, Maryland, and other areas. Millions passed days without electricity.

These weather-incidents are creating questions among people about the statements climate crisis deniers and “scientists” in their pay roll forcefully and shrewdly propagate.

Jane Lubchenco, head of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), on July 6 told a university forum in Canberra that the experience of recent extreme weather has convinced many Americans previously unconvinced or unconcerned with the impact of man-made climate change.

“People’s perceptions in the United States at least are in many cases beginning to change as they experience something first-hand that they at least think is directly attributable to climate change,” Jane said. Climate change used to be a “nebulous concept”, removed from everyday life, she said. As an example of people’s attention to the science behind the storms she cited “skyrocketing” demand for NOAA’s data from individuals and groups across the US.

It seems climate crisis deniers and their reliable “scientists” are loosing ground in the area of public trust in a country significant in climate crisis negotiations.

Despite the fact the deniers may argue for a short while. But they will be denied of soundness of their arguments as they confront, if they like to, the fact of frequency of extreme weather in a short span of recent time. The “wise” deniers argue: Conclusion on climate can’t be reached on the basis of one or two erratic events. But they miss the aspects of frequency, intensity and time span, and historical records.

Climate crisis deniers, however, don’t restrain. To assert claims of denying the climate crisis deniers have powerful organs.

The Wall Street Journal climate denial episode is now well known to many. The famous WSJ published an opinion piece signed by 16 “scientists” with flawed and misleading arguments about climate science with the following headline: “No Need to Panic About Global Warming”. The “scientists” tried to argue that “there’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy”.

But the WSJ “upholding” the principle of democracy and fairness refused to publish a scientifically accurate essay by 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences on the realities of climate crisis. The NAS is the preeminent independent scientific organizations in the US and members of the Academy are among the most respected in the world in their respective areas of knowledge and work. However, Science, one of the most important journals on scientific issues in the US, later published the NAS members’ essay.

But, the episode of denying freedom of expression exposed the deniers’ position. They even tried to deny, actually suppress, scientific fact. It is an old practice by the forces of status quo and decay since science started its journey for the welfare of humanity.

The climate crisis deniers’ also get exposed as “stories”, actually scandals involving innocent-looking “scientists”, of funding to climate denial “endeavors” come to light. It’s actually funding denial-“science” game, which is quite old. The funds come from powerful interests signifying the extent of interest in denying the climate crisis.

On May 30, 2012, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report that found 28 “leading” US companies that publicly express concern about climate change but provide support to think tanks and groups engaged with the work of denying the climate crisis issue.

Obviously, these donors provide support to the denial-“science” behind public eye, a non-transparent practice but usual for capital. This fact exposes corporate hypocrisy, lie, and practice: pronounce what consumers like to listen and do what you consider as your interest.

Half, 14, of the UCS examined companies misrepresented climate crisis in their public communications. Many more contributed to the spread of misinformation about the climate crisis in ways that included political contributions, trade group memberships, and think tank funding. These companies, the report found, utilized their financial resources to oppose climate policy. Lobbying expenditures for energy sector companies increased by 92% from 2007 to 2009, the period climate change bills were actively debated in the US congress.

According to the report, the worst offenders were ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, DTE energy, General Electric Company, and Caterpillar Inc. Peabody Energy Corporation was ranked the most obstructionist of these companies. The company spent more than $33m to lobby its interest. Caterpillar spent more than $16m on lobbying. Valero Energy Corporation donated more than $4 million to the Yes on Prop 23, a campaign that sought to undermine California’s climate change law, but voters rejected it.

There is bigger money behind climate crisis-denial “science”. According to the Green Peace, the billionaire US oilmen David Koch and his brother Charles have funneled $61.48 million to climate-denial misinformation and disinformation groups working to obstruct policies and regulations aimed at stopping global warming. The Koch brothers funneled another $4.38 million into the climate crisis denial venture.

Americans for Prosperity ($5.7 million since 1997), the Heritage Foundation ($2.7 million), the Cato Institute ($1.2 million), and the Manhattan Institute ($1.2 million) were the top recipients of Koch money.

All of these are prestigious institutes in the realm of knowledge. Their observations carry more weight of credibility than many governments in poor countries. Their advocacy influences life of millions of poor around the world although millions of poor don’t know names of these organizations and are not aware of these institutes’ connections, power and influence.

The Koch brothers have billions of dollars from their ownership and control of Koch Industries, an oil corporation that is the second largest privately-held company in the US.
Kansas-based Koch Industries is a conglomerate dominated by petroleum and chemical interests with approximately $100 billion in annual sales and having operations in about 60 countries. The Koch brothers’ money is funneled through one of three “charitable” foundations they have set up: the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation; the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation; and the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation. David Koch, one of the owners of this power, once claimed that “global warming could be good for the planet”. It’s not possible for the farmers and fishers, the people, facing uncertain future caused by rising temperature and sea level to perceive David’s perception of “good”.

While two persons deal with billions of dollars the rest millions count cents and a meal a day. A bad catch of fish, a bad yield of crop in a season demolishes survival opportunity of many. To a poor child of school going age, who helps his father in fishing or farming, education and sports are not the issue. The issue is a favorable weather for fishing, crop not damaged by insects, a better earning, a better food, a sleep not disturbed by an angry sea. The two worlds, of the rich and of the poor, are completely opposite.

But the deniers don’t refrain. The Green Peace reports Koch Industries: Still Fueling Climate Denial, 2011 and Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine tell about the deniers, their misdoings in the area of climate crisis. In March 2010, Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine, another Greenpeace report, told of an “initiative”. Their funding is so big, activities are so wide and involvement/meddling are so deep that the information in these reports may appear a small fragment to a reader concerned with the climate crisis.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund has a similar report: The Koch Brothers: What You Need to Know about the Financiers of the Radical Right. The Center for Public Integrity has another report: Koch’s Web of Influence. Audio recordings from inside the Koch’s 2011 secret strategy meeting available at BradBlog with additional reporting by Mother Jones present more facts.

This profit entity owned by the Koch brothers, two of the top 10 richest people in the US, is an ally of ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and other donors that support organizations and individuals – a section of scientists, media men, politicians – opposing energy and climate policy that take into account the issue of climate crisis. Their propagandists also come from poor countries, from countries being affected by the rising seas.

From 2005 to 2008, ExxonMobil spent US$8.9 million, while the Koch Industries controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding to organizations of the climate crisis denial “science”.

But facts can’t be suppressed.

The Koch brothers funded a research that concluded the planet is warming. The Charles G. Koch Foundation provided $150,000 to the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study in 2011, which was embraced by the denial machine until it redundantly re-confirmed that there in the world temperature is increasingly. Neither of the brothers explained the way the BEST study they funded contradicts their denial of climate crisis. Greenpeace activists asked David Koch the question. But there was no explanation.

This climate crisis denial, the “game” of money, does not only expose a section of capital’s role in climate crisis. It does also tell the old truth experienced by science and knowledge over ages: Suppress fact in the interest of status quo even if that act of suppression hurts the common people. Thus interest of status quo stands against the interest of the common people and against science, and there resurfaces the old contradiction between capital and science.

Deny Global Warming, Intimidate A Scientist, And Pocket Some Money

Denying the fact of global warming is “not” a sin. Intimidating a scientist providing facts on global warming is “not” an offence. These are in the interest of a bigger interest: an economy warming up and periling the world, and in eternal wish of perpetuating status quo. A section of the world masters clutch this pattern of praxis.

Michael E. Mann, a scientist at Penn State University , experienced this “sweet” fact. His research confirmed the fact of global warming. The results of his study were published in Nature in 1998. His finding showed a recent unprecedented alarming global temperature increase, and the increase in temperature is linked to human induced activities, to cars, factories, etc. Many other later studies have confirmed the finding. But the scientist was persecuted by conservative forces for telling the truth.

The data Mann got appeared the shape of a hockey stick as these were put as a graph, and the name, Hockey stick graph , and a confusion were brought to the Earth. His finding was used prominently by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Hockey stick graph angered global warming deniers, and Mann was made “a target of right-wing denial campaigners.” A section of scientists tied to status quo and a section of politicians of the same feather vigorously opposed it and created confusion. The opposition ultimately appeared in true color – status quo politics. Conservatives and capital joined hands in denying the fact.

While seeds of confusion were being sown Mann had to bear “the full brunt of attacks by climate change deniers, including death threats and accusations of misappropriating funds,” as The Guardian said. (“Death threats, intimidation and abuse: climate change scientist Michael E. Mann counts the cost of honesty”, March 3, 2012 ) “Among the tactics used against Mann were the theft and publication, in 2009, of emails he had exchanged with climate scientist Professor Phil Jones of East Anglia University . Selected, distorted versions of these emails were then published […] in order to undermine UN climate talks due to begin in Copenhagen a few weeks later”. Using those emails to kill off the climate negotiation was “a crime against humanity, a crime against the planet,” Mann said. (ibid.)

A number of policy foundations threw a barrage of intimidation to Mann. These “were set up by privately-funded groups that included Koch Industries and Scaife Foundations and bore names such as the Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity and the Heartland Institute. These groups bombarded Mann with freedom of information requests […]” He was served with a subpoena by a Republican congressman to provide access to his correspondence. The aim was to intimidate the scientist. He was “attacked by Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican attorney general of Virginia who has campaigned to have the scientist stripped of academic credentials. Several committees of inquiry have investigated Mann's work. All have exonerated him. Thousands of emails have been sent to Mann, many deeply unpleasant. ‘You and your colleagues… ought to be shot, quartered and fed to the pigs along with your whole damn families', said one. ‘I was hopin [sic] I would see the news and you commited [sic] suicide', ran another.” “‘On one occasion, I had to call the FBI after I was sent an envelope with a powder in it', Mann adds. ‘It turned out to be cornmeal but again the aim was intimidation. I ended up with police security tape all over my office doors and windows. That is the life of a climate scientist today in the US .'” (ibid.)

Mann's book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars is coming out in April. “The book details the ‘disingenuous and cynical' methods used by those who have tried to disprove his findings.” (ibid.)

Intimidating Mann is not an isolated act. This type of activities has connection to bigger money. But, ultimately this comes to public view. Intimidators and global warming deniers are exposed. One such story is Chicago-based Heartland Institute's.

The institute's documents related to its donors, spending and anti-science strategy were leaked recently. The institute is one of the leading deniers in the US that strains to create confusion in the public “mind” by saying that “climate change is a controversial, unproven theory.”

The leaked documents prove that the oil-rich Koch brothers donated $200,000 to HI in 2011and before. The Koch brothers' involvement makes HI a shill for oil companies. The brothers have backed climate-denier Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign.

One of the documents reveal HI's plans to spend $100,000 to build an anti-climate change curriculum for schools that “shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain — two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.”

Recently, David Suzuki writes, someone sent documents from the HI's board of directors' Jan. 17 meeting to persons and organizations including DeSmogBlog, a website devoted to exposing the climate change denial. “The documents confirm much of what we already knew about Heartland […]” Suzuki says: HI doesn't publicly reveal its funding source and expenditure. “These documents indicate that Heartland has offered U.S. weatherman blogger and climate change denier Anthony Watts close to $90,000 for a new project. They also reveal that Heartland funds other prominent deniers, including ‘Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), Fred Singer ($5,000 per month, plus expenses), Robert Carter ($1,667 per month), and a number of other individuals' […] And even though it has received funding from wealthy individuals and corporations in the fossil fuel and tobacco industries, including the Koch brothers and RJR Tobacco, it gets most of its money from a single anonymous donor”: $4.6 million in 2008. “The papers also confirm that the institute's primary mission is to discredit the established science of human-caused climate change.” (“It's time that climate-change deniers were exposed”, Feb. 21, 2012 )

Citing leaked documents Josh Israel and Brad Johnson expose 19 major corporations backing the HI. The documents reveal “the think tank's plans to teach students that climate change is a hoax […]” ( ThinkProgress Green ) The institute, however, “ deemed at least one of the documents fake and some tampered with.” The think tank's 2010-2011 “corporate backers included Altria Client Services Inc. : $90,000, Amgen , USA : $25,000, Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc. : $5,000, AT&T : $100,000, BB&T : $16,105, Comcast Corporation : $35,000, General Motors Foundation : $30,000, GlaxoSmithKline : $50,000, Microsoft Corporation : $59,908, Nucor Corporation : $502,000, PepsiCo, Inc. : $5,000, Pfizer : $130,000, Reynolds American Inc. : $110,000, Time Warner Cable : $20,000.” (Jaeah Lee, “Which Major Corporations Are Backing a Climate-Denier Think Tank?”, Mother Jones , Feb. 18, 2012 ) Other companies included Diageo: $10,000, Eli Lilly & Company: $25,000, KCI: $115,000, LKQ Corporation: $24,500, XL Group: $35,000. Combined contributions of the companies exceeded $1.3 million for an array of projects. The AP independently verified their contents. ( ThinkProgress Green ) HI also collects money from Philip Morris parent company Altria and the tobacco giant Reynolds American. (Cory Doctorow, “Leaked climate-change denial lobby docs came from water scientist”, Feb. 21)

However, a number of companies have issued statements about their contributions, but none have committed to ending their support for the HI. A Diageo spokesperson said: “Diageo provided a small contribution (nearly two years ago) […] related to an excise tax issue. We vigorously oppose climate skepticism and our actions are proof of this. We will be reviewing any further association with this organization.” A GlaxoSmithKline spokesperson said: “GSK absolutely does not endorse or support the [HI]'s views on the environment and climate change. We have in the past provided a small amount of funding to support the Institute's healthcare newsletter and a meeting.” While disavowing climate denial, Microsoft has indicated no intention to stop its in-kind tax-deductible contributions to the think tank. General Motors defended the HI as “careful and considerate.” Forecast The Facts has established a petition to GM asking them to stop funding climate denial. ( ThinkProgress Green ) It's only part of a story. There are also other parts of the denial story.

Money business with the global warming issue is quite old. In 2010, after analyzing publicly available campaign finance records the Climate Action Network (CAN) stated that “a number of European companies are supporting climate legislation blockers in the U.S. by funding the campaigns of republican candidates to the U.S. Senate.” The CAN finding was that a number of big European industrial companies including Arcelor Mittal, GDF Suez, BP, BASF, Bayer and Lafarge already spent a total of 171.000 Euro on candidates. “They are funding almost exclusively Senate candidates who have been outspoken in their opposition to comprehensive climate policy in the U.S. , and candidates who actively deny the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and is caused by people. These companies are simultaneously lobbying against aggressive emissions reductions in Europe – and are arguing that such reductions should not be pursued until the United States takes action”, it said.

Indicating the climate change deniers Bryan Walsh writes: “[T]hey refuse even to believe that a problem exists — despite an overwhelming scientific consensus that says it does. One of America 's major political parties has, in effect, adopted denial as policy.” (“Who's Bankrolling the Climate-Change Deniers?”, Time , Oct. 4, 2011 )

Citing sociologists Riley Dunlap of Oklahoma State University and Aaron McCright of Michigan State University Bryan writes: “[C]limate denialism exists in part because there has been a long-term, well-financed effort on the part of conservative groups and corporations to distort global-warming science. That's the conclusion of a chapter the two researchers recently wrote for The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society . ‘Contrarian scientists, fossil-fuel corporations, conservative think tanks and various front groups have assaulted mainstream climate science and scientists for over two decades,' Dunlap and McCright write. ‘The blows have been struck by a well-funded, highly complex and relatively coordinated denial machine.'” (ibid.)

“Fossil-fuel companies like Exxon and Peabody Energy — which obviously have a business interest in slowing any attempt to reduce carbon emissions — have combined with traditionally conservative corporate groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and conservative foundations like the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity, to raise doubts about the basic validity of what is, essentially, a settled scientific truth. That message gets amplified by conservative think tanks — like the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute — and then picked up by conservative media outlets […] and cable TV.

“For both Big Oil and Big Smoke, that playbook is lethally simple: don't straight-up refute the science, just raise skepticism and insist that the findings are ‘unsettled' and that ‘more research' is necessary. Repeat that again and again regardless of the latest research, and you help block the formation of the solid majority needed to create any real political change. (ibid.)

Climate crisis denial is well organized. Claims have been made that lobbyists including the Western Fuels Association funded efforts to undermine the scientific basis of climate crisis explanation. In 1998, the American Petroleum Institute organized discussions between oil companies, trade associations and conservative think tanks. The API provided fund for research critical of the Hockey stick graph. In June 2002, the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists published a paper arguing against the IPCC findings and the Kyoto Protocol.

Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway's Merchants of Doubt (2010) cites collusion between private corporations, conservative think tanks and conservative scientists to create confusion so that scientific consensus on current burning issues are not questioned as the burning issues have been blazed by the present economic world order.

Since long, climate crisis issue has turned into a political issue. A section of capital is fully in politics with the issue. Sections of conservatives deny the fact of climate crisis while the rest of the human society is concerned with the facts. Contradictory activities and interests have made it also a class issue. Interests opposed to people, especially the poor are well aware of it. All their activities, in economy, politics, diplomacy, propaganda, in bargaining conclaves, in education, in scientific pursuits, reflect this. All their efforts are to keep people unaware, uninformed, misinformed, demobilized. It's not only labor's, entire people's interests also stand opposed to the status quo interests in the global warmsphere.

However, there is effort and hope as “Mann insists he will not give up. ‘I have a six-year-old daughter and she reminds me what we are fighting for.' […C]limate change deniers and their oil and coal industry backers have overstepped the mark and goaded scientists to take action. He points to a recent letter, signed by 250 members of the US National Academy of Science, including 11 Nobel laureates, and published in Science . The letter warns about the dangers of the current attacks on climate scientists and calls ‘for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them.' ‘Words like those give me hope', says Mann.” ( The Guardian , op. cit.) The more people get mobilized the more there will be hope.

Democratic Struggle And The Struggle For The Environment Are Tied Together

By Fred Magdoff & Farooque Chowdhury

Interview of Professor Fred Magdoff by Farooque Chowdhury on climate crisis

“People's democratic struggle and the struggle for the environment should be intimately tied together. If the environmental issues are brought front and center within the people's struggles it might even result in more support for change”, said Fred Magdoff , co-author of What Every Environmentalist Needs To Know about Capitalism, A Citizen's Guide to Capitalism and the Environment (with John Bellamy Foster. MR Press). I n an interview, first carried by MRzine , Fred Magdoff, professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont and adjunct professor of crop and soil science at Cornell University said: “We should oppose all ‘market oriented' so-called ‘solutions'. They are not actually solutions, but rather just a new way to make money.” Prof. Magdoff writes frequently on political economy. His most recent books are The Great Financial Crisis (written with John Bellamy Foster, MR Press) and Agriculture and Food in Crisis (edited with Brian Tokar, MR Press).

In the backdrop of climate crisis threatening millions of people around the world and their struggle for democratic life, and the coming climate talks in Durban, CoP 17, Fred Magdoff ( FM ) was interviewed in late-November, 2011 on climate crisis by Farooque Chowdhury ( FC ), a Dhaka-based freelancer. Following is the text of the interview:

FC: We know CoP 17 is going to begin in Durban . What issues should the most affected/vulnerable countries raise in the conference?

FM: The most affected and vulnerable countries are clearly concerned about the lack of urgency felt by the wealthy countries. The crux of the issue is to get a commitment from the United States , Europe, and Japan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There is some indication that China is beginning to move in that direction, although its rapid pace of growth may outweigh efforts to reduce emissions. Although effects are already felt in the U.S. and Europe , the most difficult results of climate change have been felt in the poorer countries and among vulnerable people. The sea level rise along with warming is necessitating the transfer of Alaskan villages away from the coast. Seawater intrusion in Vietnam 's Mekong Delta region is causing salinity to develop in some of the rice soils, reducing their productivity. The melting of the Andean glaciers has already resulted in water shortages during the dry season.

FC: There is the debt crisis in Europe . The Great Financial Crisis has not retreated to its den. What will be the probable impact of these on the CoP 17?

FM: The theme that is commonly expressed by those wishing to do nothing is that a movement to restrict greenhouse gas emission would cost jobs. Fewer coal miners, less electricity generated (if coal powered electric generating plants were closed down), and so on. So they say that this is not the time to do something that would cost jobs. Of course, it is just an excuse. If a transition was planned and done well many jobs could be created. Also, what kind of society and economy do we have that would say that we need to continue polluting so people can work? This is not only an irrational economic/social/political system but also a dangerous one.

FC: In the backdrop of conflicting interests of major polluters, which is essentially conflict of interest of related capitals for their accumulation, what should be the negotiating strategy of most vulnerable countries in CoP 17?

FM: Far be it from me to give advice to the most vulnerable countries. They seem to be very well aware of the political problems. They have previously tried a number of innovative strategies and I am sure that they will continue to do so.

FC: Is there any change in the climate crisis negotiation scenario since the CoP 16 in Cancun ?

FM: The position of the wealthy countries has if anything solidified and hardened. There is an Guardian (UK) article of November 20, 2011 that is titled “ Rich nations 'give up' on new climate treaty until 2020” and has as its subtitle: “ Ahead of critical talks and despite pledge for new treaty by 2012, biggest economies privately admit likelihood of long delay.” This, of course, has been greeted by the most vulnerable with dismay and anger.

FC: As a participant, you presented a key note paper in the Mother Earth conference in Bolivia . There is the Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia . A ministry in the country looks after these rights. Have the deliberations and call of the conference, and the step by Bolivia made any impact in today's discourse on climate crisis?

FM: I think that Bolivia played a very important role following the failure of Copenhagen meetings in December of 2009. Just bringing so many people together in Cochabamba , Bolivia in April of 2010 was quite a feat. The discussion was very good as was the final declaration of the conference. One of small things that happened was the exposure to the large group of how the United States was using a money offer in order to get Bolivia and Ecuador to sign on to the Copenhagen statement drafted mainly by the wealthy countries. A cabinet minister from Ecuador said that she was authorized to tell the assembled people that Ecuador refused the money but was prepared to offer the United States the same amount of money if it would agree to sign the Kyoto protocols. Needless to say, there was plenty of laughter after that statement.

FC: Is there any conflict, but not articulated, between the dominating economic interests and people's interests in the position emerging economies have taken in climate crisis negotiation?

FM: YES! The main conflict is one of the interests of capitalism as a system and of its most powerful representatives. Since at the heart of the issue is the normal way capitalism functions — it has to continue growing or else it's in crisis and has no other goal other than the accumulation of more and more capital. It would take a VERY enlightened leader of one of the leading rich capitalist countries to even attempt to take on the vested interests that are perfectly happy with the way things are.

FC: If “yes”, how to resolve this contradiction or what program should be there from people's perspective in the emerging economies?

FM: This is certainly a very difficult question to answer. Perhaps an equivalent of “direct action” activism is needed by the most vulnerable. Maybe disrupting the workings of the UN or other world organizations might get some positive results.

FC: A portion of capital is now-a-days active to make a climate deal as climate crisis threatens its domain. At the same time, to a section of capital, climate crisis appears a potential market. How to ensure people's interests in this market that is making climate crisis a commodity?

FM: I think that we should oppose all “market oriented” so-called “solutions.” They are not actually solutions, but rather just a new way to make money. They give the appearance of accomplishing something, although they are rife with fraud and do not solve the problem even if well carried out.

FC: What role can people's organizations play in respective countries/societies that can impact climate crisis negotiation? Should these only be confined in raising demands, organizing demonstrations, etc. or along with these, widen public space through mobilizing people in positive, locally practicable approaches?

FM: It is up to the creativity and energy of the people to develop new approaches to the negotiations. It is not clear to me how to negotiate when one group is not really interested. This is something like what is happening in the U.S. Congress where the Republican Party has absolutely no interest in negotiations, whatever the consequences.

FC: Can participatory climate assessment at local level be a tool, a better one than mere forming human chains, etc. for a shorter period, to make people actively aware and to actively mobilize them on the climate crisis issue?

FM: Using a participatory assessment to make people aware of their climate and the implications of changes that are occurring can certainly be useful. It is also important to start discussions and even planning at the local level for sea level rise, droughts, floods, hot weather, etc. — whatever is most relevant to the local or regional situation. There are low-tech ways of lessening some of the detrimental effects.

FC: Will not climate crisis negatively impact people's democratic struggle?

FM: I think that the people' democratic struggle and the struggle for the environment should be intimately tied together. The climate crisis, as well as the other environmental crises that are occurring, should make it clearer to people that these are crises of the system itself. And the only meaningful way to deal with social as well as environmental problems is to organize a new society based on equality, democracy, and care for the environment. So the issue itself provides another argument against the capitalist system.

FC: Should the crisis be viewed as a potential threat to people's struggle for a decent, democratic life?

FM: The way I view it, while making things more difficult for people, climate changes provide another argument against the capitalist system and provides more urgency to seek systemic changes. If the environmental issues are brought front and center within the people's struggles it might even result in more support for change.

FC: Is not there the need to include climate demands in the program for democratic struggle, targeting the global and local climate criminal capitals that are snatching away atmospheric space from people?

FM: Absolutely. This must become a central part of the struggle. And I would broaden the issue to other types of environmental degradation — chemical pollution of air, water, and food; overfishing by factory-size boats causing depletion of fish stocks; soil erosion and degradation; depletion of fresh water supplies; etc.

FC: Can organizing climate crime tribunals at respective levels be a forum for active mobilization and protest by climate-poor?

FM: Yes. I think that this is one of the ways that more attention can be focused on the issues and on the intransigence of the wealthy countries.

FC: Thank you, for the interview.

Profit, Pollution And Poor

Profit is the biggest polluter. The economy that goes to any length for profit, the politics that stands for profit-thirsty economy, the conspicuous consumption-lifestyle that finds life in profit and considers nothing but self, and that is profit at any cost, pollute most. Ecology, environment, pollution, sustaining life on the earth, and all other issues between heaven and earth turns non-issues to profit-hunting.

Profit generates poverty. Profit pushes the multitude to a poverty-laden life, where the poor find nothing but the only way to scour and forage the dirt, the dust, the mud, the municipal garbage dumping grounds, the last portion of tree felled by the powerful, and all these are simply for survival in a world conquered by monster-profit. In their thirst for life, the poor save every drop of water, every piece of paper thrown away by the paper-rich, every piece of cans and plastic bottles, thrown away foods by the food-rich. They consume these, they use these, they recycle these, they earn by selling these to recyclers. Thus they contribute to the survival journey of this resource-poor planet. Thus they stand opposed to profit, to the rich, to the squandering life style of an irresponsible minority in society. Thus an antagonistic relation is established between profit and poor, between rich and ecology.

Excesses of the filthy rich are unsustainable. They live with $1,350 wedge-heel sandals, $18,400 leather tote bags, $80,000 BMW 750, $130,000 Maserati Quattroporte, $8,600 custom-tailored suit, day shirts in 350 colors, 35 fabrics, 10 different collars and 2 cuff styles, 127 million euro yacht, $35,000 intricately detailed canine palace with “recessed and interior lighting, air conditioning, dry-walled interiors and custom furnishing”, “Mughal-inspired kebabs topped with shaved pearls and plates trimmed with 24-karat gold leaf”, $1,200 a plate meal. (Newsweek, May 26/June 2, 2008) This is a miniscule, fractional-fraction of squandering by the energy-rich. The majestic mansions, the private jets and islands, the luscious parties, the blazing ornaments, the protected neighborhoods, the delicately designed detail arrangement for vacations of the rich exist as an obstacle to the changes the world needs immediately. Their vulgar lifestyle, ab ovo usque ad mala, from the beginning to the end, lives in a system. The shrewd system, economic and political, needed to feed and fuel this idiotic lifestyle is inefficient, energy-hungry, nature-gulping. The system devours environment and ecology. In this economy, it is profit, not necessities of life that determines allocation of resources. This market-driven allocation, as Professor Robin Hahnel explained, is inefficient. (“Against the Market Economy”) No doubt, it is an inefficient compulsion. This allocation, determined by compulsion for profit, all most all the time, contradicts with environment. Should not blame for the environmental crisis be laid on this inefficient, but profit-sensitive economy and the state and the society that this hungry economy creates?

All commodities produced in this world system are not essential for life, are not consumed by the masses of common persons. Rather, a lot of commodities burden life, and take toll from nature while getting produced, but they make profit. Dominating interests enjoy a lot of those commodities. Those lots are also in smaller proportion. But those are needed by the capital to make profit. Section of powerful media manipulates mass psychology so that masses turn consumers of commodities produced for profit, but not essential for life.

Economic-political-social-information structure is so designed that often consumers and, in broader terms, broad society remains unaware of harmful effects of many commodities or material used or processes followed for manufacturing these commodities. The structure keeps them unaware of and incapable to calculate the total cost they pay for the commodity they consume and for the pollution the commodities create in manufacturing and use processes. Most of the time, the consumers remain unorganized that makes them incapable to resist polluting technology. (ibid.) As an arithmetic of profit, technologies that carry risk of reducing profit but helpful for environment are not introduced by capital in control of technology and innovation.

A section of environmental discourse ignores this intricate relation between economy, nature, society, environment, profit for few, welfare of all, politics, distribution system, consumption style, etc. The “Mickey Mouse” model, ozpolitic tells, treats economy as an entity non-dependent on society and environment while the “bullseye” model treats economy as dependent on society and environment. The model followed by mainstream is the “Mickey Mouse” model.

It is not that the pecuniary dominating classes are ignorant of the science, economics and politics of ecology. It is oligarchy’s, and now in countries, plutocracy’s class interest – light speed-super-ultra-profit – that keeps them indifferent to environmental problems, to environment-destitute, to ecology-poor, to climate-refugees, to unequal access to ecology, to injustices of inequality, to indecencies of life, to indignities of poverty. The system standing on immense wealth power excludes the poor. The poor are excluded from fora for voicing concern with the defaced ecology they live in, excluded from getting aware of ecological devastations that degrade their life to the level even miserable than the living condition of pet dogs and cats of the rich. Most of the time, the poor are kept unaware of this despicable reality of I-enjoy-you-to-doom. (Keeping the poor unaware is another complex story, told elsewhere.)

Dominating capital and the state machine it controls benefit from processes harmful for environment. (A. Dobson, Green Political Theory: An Introduction) There are cases in this world when state protects environment plunderers as the party of plunderers has assigned state the task. State faithfully carries on this assignment, at times, with a mask of a blind-deaf-dumb-inefficient-worthless-broken down-hapless machine, at times, turning captive to detail, imposing legal edifice its masters have erected, at times, suffering from scarcity of resources required to enforce steps essential for environment, at times, presiding over distribution of chunks of land to its masters and masters’ underlings, at times, “benevolently” concerned with imaginary-trickling down growth only. Although, there are times, states in this amazing world act swiftly, unerringly, efficiently, delicately, smartly, secretly, head-hands-legs not tied or smoothened by legalities and legitimacies. Those are moments for maintaining status quo. Those are issues and times for its survival of its masters, not for survival of environment of/for common community. At times, state turns ignorant; it does not know the way to use taxation-tool to fight pollution. But, at times, it knows smart ways to use tax-tool to benefit polluters, at least not to harm those actors.

For earning bread, the working people have to take dangerous jobs, jobs harmful for their health and head and for environment. Environmental problems severely affect the working class. Many reports, studies, books and essays including Rod Crompton and Alec Erwin’s “Reds And Greens: Labour And The Environment” in Jacklyn Cock and Eddie Koch’s Going Green, D E Morrison and R.E. Dunlap’s “Environmentalism And Elitism: A Conceptual And Empirical Analysis”, (Environmental Management, vol. 10, no. 5), K D van Liere and R E Dunlap’s “The Social Bases of Environmental Concern: A Review Of Hypotheses, Explanations And Empirical Evidence” (Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 2), State of India’s Environment, Citizens’ Reports, People’s Reports on Bangladesh Environment provide evidence of the suffering.

Resolving the crisis requires replacement of the system and relation of production that cannot sustain without expanding always and without devouring the nature, and the political arrangement that the relation and system build up. It has to be replaced by a society that organizes production and distribution democratically in the interests of all. The social system that now governs human society blindly stands against the indispensable changes as Hervé Kempf, environmental editor, Le Monde, tells in his book How the Rich are Destroying the Earth.

Reality that appears puts forth the following urgent, immediate task: seriously review the political and economic power, processes, institutions and relations that maintain and control inequality in distribution pinning down multitude to an ecologically intolerable life – ramshackle, dingy, windowless, dark hovel adjacent to or amidst heaps of garbage, where stagnant water subdued by mosquitoes dominates with its odor, where water and energy are extremely scarce, where unhealthy little kitchen and toilet are disproportionately shared by too many, where it turns difficult to identify whether drains are in courtyard or courtyard is drains, where sons of Adam consume bare minimum but work for hours and hours, where park, play ground and affordable amusement are unknown facilities, where fresh air is a forgotten dream, where similar innumerable descriptions make perception unmanageable. The review will lead to increased space – ecological, economic, political, information – for the poor.

Mainstream environment dissertate don’t go for this review, don’t raise the issue of remodeling distribution and consumption. It keeps itself busy and vocal with the very important task of saving trees and rivers while it forgets the issue of the living condition of the poor, an essential part of environment. It denies looking at the reasons behind reaching the critical ecological threshold. It is a denial of connivance.

Today’s ecological equity demands: increased consumption of the poorest, for the sake of their survival, and reversal of consumption of the insensitive top 20% of the world population consuming 80% of the planet’s wealth. Common persons have direct interest in environment. For having a dignified human existence, a vibrant ecology is common persons’ requirement. For their survival, they have to stand for it. Communities of common persons have to take initiative identifying sources of environmental crisis, fighting the crisis out, regenerate environment. 

Climate crisis and an isle lost

CLIMATE crisis has resolved, as a news report said, competing claims by two countries over an isle in a bay near an ocean. Climate crisis creators deserve thanks! They should claim it! They should claim a laurel for strengthening regional peace! The climate criminals have helped avert a source of future tension between two friendly neighbors! Criminals are not always criminals. Isn’t it? But what the climate crisis criminals is creating for the world? None knows! Everyone knows. A few learned souls know while us the rest swallow sweet stories: to be or not to be.
There awaits a may be or may not be story. A leading Dhaka daily assured a few weeks ago: Bangladesh doobchhe naa, Bangladesh is not submerging! It was not a story of building castles in the air, but of sand dunes stretching hands towards sea, of denying dangerous sea-level rise. It was a lead story, assuring news for a country counting days in the face of fuming sea. It was a story with far-reaching implications, implications mainly for a nation that is striving to face a changing coastline, implications in the areas of agriculture and assistance, in the domains of demography and development, in the spheres of society and survival strategy, and many more. And, it is not an exceptional story. Similar stories and analyses are sold, distorted conclusions are sold on the basis of an incident of irregular scientific data, an exaggeration is capitalised to deny a coming catastrophe. But, truth is true. Fact is factual. Facts are seldom distorted also. But a fine facade of fallacy cannot hide a planetary catastrophe looming over billions.
The already mentioned news-story despatched in the later part of March said: For about three decades two countries have argued over control of a tiny rock island. But now rising sea levels have resolved the dispute for them: the island is gone. It has been completely submerged. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols. ‘What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking has been resolved by global warming,’ said an oceanographer. Another nearby island submerged in 1996, forcing its inhabitants to move to the mainland, while almost half of another island is underwater. At least 10 other islands in the area are at risk as well.
The paragraphs above are neither to discuss the disputed island nor the claims and counterclaims nor the relations between two countries nor the not-submerging-analysis. There are authorities to check and recheck, to confirm or to deny. The isle story is just a reference point to climate crisis. Some other news-story could have cited some other similar incident from some other region. These lines are for referring to climate crisis not even being now denied by a section of powerful capital, with deeper vested interests, with shrewd brains to lobby, with stronger arms to manipulate.
Whatever happens, whether an isle gets lost or not, whether part of a country doobook – naa doobook, submerges or not, climate crisis is there, the mean sea level will rise, a great migration is in the offing, economies are going to take brunt of a planetary crisis to the level never experienced by this earth system, life on this now-not-so-green-planet is in peril, the mother earth is facing a future unknown. The coming climate conflicts and incidents have no parallel in the annals of this earth. The unfolding scenario also carries threats to and opportunities for capital. With a stagnant world economy for decades a section of capital finds rays of hope for investment in emerging climate crisis market.
Chief executive officers of 83 leading US companies including some of the US largest electric power, renewable oil, bioproducts, airline, manufacturing, and clean tech like Exelon, Virgin America, NRG Energy, eBay and PG&E, in a letter to President Obama and members of Congress urged to quickly enact comprehensive climate and energy legislation that would increase US competitiveness. They said: the US was falling behind in the clean energy race. The letter called for legislation that would unleash innovation and drive economic growth. It said: ‘[T]oday’s uncertainty surrounding energy and climate regulation is hindering the large-scale actions that American businesses are poised to make. We need strong policies and clear market signals that … reward companies that innovate. It is time …to embrace this policy as the promising economic opportunity that will empower … American entrepreneurship to lead the way.’ The CEOs ‘need the certainty of clear rules and strong policies’ that helps invest. They hoped that through ‘strong climate and energy policies’ they would ‘emerge stronger.’ As the US is searching ways to promote economic growth, and improve energy and national security, a section of capital considers that ‘smart, sensible energy and climate policies can and should be part of the solution,’ and ‘this opportunity’ should be recognised and made a reality. In October 2009, business leaders from 150 companies from 30 states across the US met government officials and Congress members to plead passage of comprehensive energy and climate legislation. They joined We Can Lead, a coalition that advocates, among others, strong energy and climate legislation to unleash US investment, restore US competitiveness and provide for economic and national security.
Capital’s other drives are there also for accumulation from climate crisis market. But it is not free from competitions from within. Rather, competition is characteristic of it. Competitions are resolved through conflicts and compromises. The Copenhagen climate conference conceived a compromise, a compromise among the warring climate forces in a world undemocratic, a compromise exposing political wills and non-wills of the most powerful countries, and the victim was, as Chavez said in Copenhagen, ‘the crushed countries, as if a train ran over us in history.’ The powerful countries’ political will was not to compromise self-interest in exchange of peoples’ interest, the part related to political non-will. Peoples’ interest states, as Chavez quoted in Copenhagen the French author Hervé Kempf: ‘We cannot reduce global material consumption if we don’t make the powerful go down several levels, and if we don’t combat inequality. [And, we say:] “Consume less and share better.”’
Today’s climate crisis is related to inequality: seven per cent richest persons are responsible for 50 per cent of emissions, and the poorest 50 per cent accounts for only seven per cent of emissions. The richest are not concerned with the poor and hungry. The richest don’t compromise their high carbon emitting lifestyle. Their dream, as Chavez quoted the great liberation theologian Leonardo Boff, is ‘seeking happiness through material accumulation and of endless progress, using for this science and technology with which they can exploit without limits all the resources of the earth.’ Their all-out thrust is to materialise this dream at the cost of this planet, and the private road to that dream world has drawn the class line of the climate crisis, a class line with opposing forces in hostile positions.
Economy and environment, economy and ecology, and economy and climate space are inseparable, and these are inseparable from politics, a sphere always pregnant with class difference. These links are inviolable. The development, and as a whole the economic model that dominates today’s world and fattens the climate crisis moves along the class line: unequal distribution, high carbon emission by the absolute minority, harder life for the energy-poor, absence of the majority’s participation, in real sense instead of a showcase, in economics, that in turn takes political character, decision making impossible. One fuels the others, one is essential for the rest. This aggravates the climate crisis reality, a reality in essence the same from the metropolis of the world system to the emerging economies with their rising nouveau rich to the poor economies dominated by plundering lumpen capital: burn non-renewable energy as much as needed for luxurious lifestyle, deforest and encroach public property under the guise of economic upward journey, precisely, encroach, burn, destroy. This influences, at core, people’s endeavour for a democracy, the democratic movement as people lose control and right over public property, as people’s voices are muzzled down by the plundering masters, as people are dispersed from their domain, as they lose survival space. The global climate crisis reality is not less cruel: a global system ever-thirsty for non-renewable resources leading to subversions, wars, and invasions, and ultimately crippling people’s effort to build a peaceful and prosperous life. Climate crisis not only deeply and gravely, but also irreversibly impacts lives of common people, especially those primarily depending on nature and environment including farmers, fishers, and persons relying on forest and marine resources. Ordinary persons’ spaces for livelihood get narrowed down as plunderers and encroachers intrude and skim the public property including forests and rivers. This act of trespass and plundering increases pressures on climate already under crisis. Geopolitics, and ruling elites’ relationship with the world system, impacts on, and makes difficult, sometimes impossible people’s capacity to cope with climate crisis. Appeasements are made and bargaining positions are compromised in exchange of ruling elites’ interests. Recent incidents in climate diplomacy bear evidences to the appeasements with, and sale-offs, to climate imperialism. Elitist approach to climate crisis and people’s approach are fundamentally different. These aspects have made the climate crisis issue an integral part of programme for democratic struggle. The pressing climate situation thus makes it an imperative to include climate-related demands in the programme for democratic struggle.
This reality provides a backdrop to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, to be held in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba from April 19 to 22, the UN Mother Earth Day. The historic conference to be hosted by the Plurinational State of Bolivia is expected to be attended by more than 10,000 people along with government representatives from more than 50 countries. Considered as alternative people’s conference on the climate issue it will seek to advance an international referendum on climate crisis as The Guardian considers that Bolivia is not prepared to ‘betray its people.’ Democracy makes betraying people impossible. Democracy, direct participation of people in an atmosphere free from vested interest influence, is one of the tools for facing climate catastrophe. The crisis cannot be faced without mobilising people and their participation, a task of democratic struggle. No sphere, from local to global, should be devoid of democracy. ‘The only thing that can save mankind from a [climate] tragedy is the exercise of global democracy,’ said Bolivia’s United Nations ambassador Pablo Solon, a key organiser of the summit. Bill McKibben, author of the first book about global warming The End of Nature, and founder of 350.org wrote (carried by Huffington Post) of the Bolivia conference: ‘[I]t’s … a People’s Summit, free from the kind of corporate interference that helped sink the Copenhagen conference….Thank heaven, then, for the nations like Bolivia willing to work … (instead of lock normal people out of the hall, as the UN did in Copenhagen).’ ‘This is a fight between’, he continued, ‘human beings on the one hand, and physics and chemistry on the other—and physics and chemistry don’t really bargain. …We don’t have all the time in the world—we don’t, in fact, have a moment to spare….Our message is…: if we can get to work, so can our lawmakers…. That process begins in April in Bolivia. The world’s leaders haven’t led, so we’re going to have to lead for them. It’s going to be a fight, and it’s on now.’ All democratic struggles, struggles opposed to climate imperialism, share this fight as peoples’ fight for a better life cannot be betrayed, and isles, humanity’s survival space, cannot be lost. It is the urgent task, the foremost task.
The urgency for saving humanity, a task democratic struggle cannot forsake, was pronounced by Chavez in the climate conference hall in Copenhagen: ‘It’s up to us, raising the banners of Christ, Mohammed, equality, love, justice, humanity, the true and most profound humanism. If we don’t do it, the most wonderful creation of the universe, the human being, will disappear, it will disappear….We are capable of not making this Earth the tomb of humanity. Let us make this earth a heaven, a heaven of life, of peace, peace and brotherhood for all humanity, for the human species.’
Farooque Chowdhury contributes articles on socio-economic issues. The Age of Crisis is his latest book.

This editorial published in Bangladeshi Daily "NEW AGE", April 13, 2010

The politics with climate crisis

The NewAge Editorial, November 6, 2009
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, 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